Bits and Pieces
by Fictatious
Summary: The usual "What if a yami or two gets their own body at the end of the series there?" set-up. Character-centric drabbles.
1. Explaining to Mom

Momoe Mutou was not pleased.

She was glaring across the kitchen table at her son and the strange foreigner who her son and father-in-law had managed to pick up God knows where. The most disturbing thing wasn't the fact that they had apparently smuggled an undocumented foreigner into the country. Though that was plenty disturbing, and she had a horrible paranoia that people from immigration were going to show up on her doorstep at any moment and arrest them all for some kind of illegal human-trafficking operation. No, the most disturbing thing was the foreign boy's face.

He was _clearly_ a foreigner. It was easy to see. He didn't look in the slightest bit Japanese. His eyes were almond-shaped, with deep folds on the upper-lids like a Westerner. His skin was darker than the ganguro girls' that hung out around the downtown shopping centers. His hair had a startling frizziness to it that kept drawing her eye. He looked absolutely foreign. So how did he somehow look so much like her son?

Every individual feature of their faces spoke to a different race, yet somehow, when the entire face was viewed in whole, they looked like they could have been brothers. How was that even possible? It made no sense what-so-ever!

"This is ridiculous!" Momoe declared, throwing up her arms. "You need to stop this right now!"

Sugoroku sighed and set down his teacup. "I know it sounds strange, Moko, but you have to acknowledge that there are plenty of things in this word that science doesn't explain. And why _shouldn't_ an empire that survived for thousands of years have discovered some of those secrets that we're still working on?"

"Dad, stop it! The way you're talking I'm starting to think it's time to send you to a home!" Momoe declared, slamming her hands down on the table.

Sugoroku recoiled slightly, a vaguely horrified look on his face. "This is _my_ house! And what happened to people respecting the wisdom of their elders?" he demanded.

"Wisdom and insanity are different things!" Momoe countered. "And I am not _having_ this! You're all going to stop making up crazy stories right now and tell me what's going on."

The foreign boy, who looked like her son but was very much not, sighed. "I'm not sure it can be explained better than we have done," he said in a calm voice in which Momoe detected just the slightest hint of condescension. "I had not finished my liturgical education when I was forced to begin this journey and my people had only the very smallest knowledge of how the Millennium Items worked. I don't understand the mechanism and I doubt any of my priests did either."

"Stop it!" Momoe demanded, starting to feel nearly hysterical in her frustration. "Stop all this foolishness about magic and tell me the truth!"

"We're really not lying, Mom..." Yuugi whined. Momoe glared at her son and he ducked his head, staring at his hands and squirming uncomfortably.

"Test me."

Momoe turned her glare back on the foreign boy. "What?" she snapped.

"I have all of Yuugi's memories. Up until a week ago, I knew everything that he knew, I received everything that he thought. Like a mental umbilical-cord." He met her eyes with an even, challenging gaze. "Test me if you don't believe us. Ask me anything Yuugi would know and I'll know it. Anything at all. I remember his entire life exactly as he does. See if you can stump me, I'm game."

Momoe's eyes narrowed. The boy wasn't taking this seriously and that only made her angrier, but he was also practically begging her to call his bluff. And she fully intended to. "What did I give Yuugi for his fourth birthday?" she demanded, feeling triumphant.

"Mom! That's not even fair!" Yuugi protested.

"Quiet, Yuugi," she snapped, and stared at the foreign boy as he gazed down at the table with unfocused eyes, appearing to think about it. "... Was the bulldozer from you or Da-er- Mister Mutou?" he asked slowly. "There was also the jigsaw... it was... Winny the Pooh, I think?"

A lucky guess. A damn lucky guess. But what four year old didn't get toy trucks and puzzles for their birthday? Momoe set her jaw and tried again. "And when he turned ten?" she challenged.

The foreign boy paused and then a gentle smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "... I can't even remember. Was it... a Gameboy? I guess... that was pretty neat, but it wasn't the important part..."

Momoe frowned and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Nobody came to my- to Yuugi's birthday party. He invited his whole class, because you said he could, and Grandpa rented a helium tank and w-he was so excited. And then nobody came, except for Anzu. She came right on time, but nobody else ever even called." The slightly sullen line that had taken over his lips suddenly curved up into a warm little smile, directed at no one in particular. "And then you inhaled helium from one of the balloons and sang the Happy Birthday Song like that and you sounded like Micky Mouse and Anzu and I just couldn't stop laughing. And then you said that it was better to have a small party because a big party couldn't fit in the car for a special surprise."

He chuckled softly, and leaned his cheek against his hand, his eyes turning upwards to meet Momoe's again. This time the cold, challenging look was gone and there was a warm affection hiding in the boy's dark eyes. "You took us to the zoo, and we spent the whole day there, and we got one of those giant-elephant banana-splits, and even with all of us eating it together we couldn't finish it." His smile deepened and Momoe almost gasped as the love of a child poured out of the boy's expression, washing over her. "That was my-" he faltered and the expression dimmed as he seemed to remember himself and tried to regain his cool composure. "That was Yuugi's favorite birthday."

Momoe stared at him for what seemed like several minutes and then stood up, pushing herself away from the table and looking away. "The Gameboy was for his _ninth_ birthday," she corrected lamely and turned towards the sink, twisting her hands in her kitchen-apron. "Well I suppose you'll be staying for dinner then."

...

...

So, uh, funny story, guys. You might be asking, "Hey, what the hell, Fictatious, what's with this out-of-context fic when you're supposed to be finishing up Final Eclipse?" Well... see... what happened there... I was downloading something on Monday night, for artistic things, and it was in a RAR folder. I opened up that RAR folder in WinRAR and set it to uncompressing, and then popped over to a message board I was chatting in on my browser. All of a sudden, both Windows and AVG start freaking the hell out going "OMG TROJAN OMG!" and I responded "OMG DELETE IT OMG!" and then the whole thing froze. Sooo... I tried to start it back up in Safe-Mode and the desktop wouldn't load. I could open up Task Manager, but couldn't get a desktop to save my life...

Long story short: I hope to have my little laptop back next Monday, and hopefully with all the cool stuff I had written on it, including a nearly finished chapter two for Final Eclipse. So... until then... Here's this thing I wrote that is part of a series of little one-shots that have been playing around in my head in recent weeks! Hooray for Google-docs saving my stuff on the internets! If only I'd had Final Eclipse somewhere besides my harddrive...

Long story short: Balls.

Oh, and in the ways of good news! Hesperadia is apparently finally getting underway. That's that Livejournal RP I mentioned a while back that I was retooling Mot to play in and since I got the news (like "Oh yeah, we're still going to do this. We didn't completely forget or give up because we're hopelessly lazy.") I've been poking around Gaia Online's art commissions area trying to find people to draw awesome pictures of Mot for me to use in icons and stuff (and just in general because he need some beauty-shots.) Check it out, first finished commission. No, he doesn't really look like Bakura or Malik, because for the purposes of the RP, I've disconnected him from Yugioh-verse and grounded him more solidly in Egyptian mythos. But y'know what would be super amazing? If any of you Yugioh-reading fanditos have within your abilities to draw in that super-angular, big-hair, crazy Yugioh style, if you could draw me a picture of Mot, I would be extra-amazing happy. Oh! And also, if any of you have a cool original character and are interested in joining my friend's RP, here's the info! Oh, and it's starting, like, a week from Saturday, I think.


	2. Going to bed

"This is so strange..." Atem mused, sitting in the middle of a futon on the floor of Yuugi's room, and buttoning up a spare pajama top.

Yuugi laughed, sitting on the edge of his own bed and kicking his legs idly. "Y'know, I think realistically, this is a lot more normal that we ever were before. Most people would say it's strange to have two people's brains living in one body!"

"Minds," Atem corrected, doing the top button. "The brain is a physical organ."

"Right," Yuugi nodded. "It's weird though, because I'm not really sure what we're supposed to do now..." he admitted. "I mean, are you supposed to just be a normal person now or something?"

Atem shrugged, fiddling with the cuffs of the shirt before scooting off of the futon so he could push the cover back. "I don't know. I suppose I'm the same age I was three thousand years ago, but back then a fifteen-year-old was an adult. I'm not sure if I could be a _teenager_."

"It's not that hard," Yuugi reasoned with a silly grin. "I mean, there's a lot of studying for exams and stuff, but you'd probably be better at most of that stuff than me anyway."

"Yuugi, I don't have a birth certificate," Atem pointed out. "I don't have an identification number or any of the things that people _have__ to have_ now. I'm like an undocumented immigrant. I can't go to school, I can't get a job, I can't have a bank account. As far as the government is concerned, I don't exist. And if somebody takes notice and reports me, I could be deported to, well, I don't even know where, because it's not as though I exist in any other countries either."

Yuugi's blood went cold at the thought. "They couldn't do that..." he protested weakly.

"Of course they could, Yuugi," Atem sighed, laying down on the futon and staring up at the ceiling.

"It'll be okay. We'll figure something out..." Yuugi mumbled unhappily.

Atem shook his head. "There's no use in thinking about it anymore tonight," he said and closed his eyes.

"... Yeah," Yuugi agreed quietly. He sat there motionless for a few minutes and then leaned over and turned off his bedside lamp, casting the room into darkness.

He wondered, as he settled into his bed, if Atem could really just stop thinking about it like that and go to sleep. He strained his ears and listened to his other self's breathing. He sounded perfectly restful. How could he sleep so easily after bringing up something so disturbing?

Yuugi rolled on his side and curled his knees up close to his body. The thought of Atem being taken away, deported to some other country or worse, was unbearable. It would be like losing half of himself. Yuugi squeezed his eyes shut tight and tried to push away the dread.

It was lonely.

The thought was lonely, but so was the way his mind just kept running around in useless circles. He was so used to having Atem's voice there in his mind, telling him to calm down when he panicked like this. Yuugi opened his eyes and stared into the pool of darkness that enveloped the floor and Atem's futon.

Atem was only a meter away from him, but it seemed like there was such a vast canyon separating them now. He wasn't Yuugi's other self anymore; he was a flesh and blood human being, and subject to all the limitations that could come with that. They weren't connected. They weren't a part of each other. Why did Atem getting his body back feel like Yuugi had lost something?

Yuugi wondered if he could manage on his own. Even if Atem was still there, he wasn't _there_. Could Yuugi be brave enough to handle even the simple daily things without knowing that Atem was with him, supporting him? He didn't think he had that kind of courage. He wasn't strong or brave like his friends. He wondered if they'd think he was just annoying and weak now.

He shivered. The canyon seemed to be growing wider by the second. Yuugi blinked quickly, his eyes hot and irritated. His other self had never scoffed at Yuugi's weakness or turned his back on Yuugi for being a coward. Maybe he still wouldn't, even though he was Atem now. Even though he didn't need Yuugi anymore.

Yuugi sat up and wiped the heel of his hand against his eye, trying to brush away tears that hadn't quite formed yet. He slid his feet to the ground and crouched down to find the edge of the futon. He pulled at the cover and started to crawl under before he paused, realizing what he was doing, how childish he was being. What was he, four?

Just as Yuugi had decided to abort the mission and climb back up into his own bed, an arm came up and caught around his shoulders, pulling him down into the futon. Yuugi shivered and pressed himself close against his other self, closing his eyes and feeling tears behind them again.

"I won't get deported, Yuugi. We'll figure something out," Atem said quietly and Yuugi nodded, tucking his face against Atem's neck and shivering as he tried let go of the tension locking up his muscles. When Atem said that things would work out, Yuugi believed it.

...

...

AN: I seem to write Yuugi with some serious self-esteem issues, but then, at least in the comics, he seems to be pretty bad about that in canon, there's pathetic little references in the anime, but it's a lot more pronounced in the comics. Beh, this is really short and I think it's pretty damn far from my best writing, but I don't really want to dedicate more to this because I just haven't felt it since the idea originally came up (before I wrote it down, I don't know, I think it might have been better if I'd been writing when I first started thinking through the scene). So anyway, here's this, and I'll post the next drabble tonight, which is much better, and I know my fanditos have come to expect at least a bit of Bakura-love, and I'd hate to disappoint.


	3. Checking on Bakura

Yuugi was up early the next day, despite not having school for another two. He was worried, or, not _worried_ because he certainly didn't not _trust_ Bakura, but he was... anxious. He was distracted through breakfast, although he did still notice the awkward tension between his mother and Atem. Atem wasn't acting much different from how he did in any social situation that he didn't know how to handle, but Yuugi couldn't remember ever seeing his mother quite like this; quietly distressed, confused, trying to keep it together and act normally.

But the uncomfortable atmosphere wasn't what made Yuugi rush through the meal. He pushed himself to his feet before he'd finished swallowing the last bite and headed to the hall to fetch his coat. "I-we're going to check on Bakura-kun, Mom," he announced, feeling Atem follow him away from the table.

"What's wrong with Bakura-kun?" Yuugi's mother asked sharply.

Oh yeah, he hadn't mentioned that part... "Um... Well..." Yuugi stammered.

"Bakura-kun is in a similar situation to us," Atem supplied helpfully. "And his- other was rather seriously injured. Bakura-kun insisted that he could handle it on his own."

Yuugi noticed another line of stress add itself to his mother's brow as he looked back at her to gage her reaction. "Damn it!" she cursed in frustration. "A boy his age shouldn't even be living on his own, and now he's looking after an injured person too? Where are that boy's _parents!_"

Yuugi chewed his lip. He honestly didn't know. He'd only heard Bakura mention his father in passing a handful of times, and usually it was in reference to places the man had traveled; Yuugi had got the impression that Bakura's father was usually traveling.

"I try not to pry..." he mumbled. "He's really responsible and stuff though. I think he does fine on his own."

His mother hmphed. "I suppose he would _have_ to be responsible since his _parents_ certainly aren't," she grumbled and started collecting the breakfast dishes off the table.

"Your mother is... upset," Atem noted. It sounded vaguely like a question.

"She's confused and stuff, I guess," Yuugi sighed. "I mean, this kind of stuff, magic and reincarnation and stuff, it doesn't happen in _modern_ times. That's all the kind of thing that's in ancient stories."

"Obviously it does happen," Atem countered.

"Well yeah, but she isn't sure she can believe that. It goes against all the stuff she learned about science and things," Yuugi explained.

"Modern science is too limited," Atem said, in a voice that sounded almost sulky.

"It's not like this is normal, I mean, it's important to try and make Mom understand, but I think we should probably make something up that sounds more plausible for other people..."

"That would be easiest," Atem agreed, nodding.

"We should work on that with Bakura-kun. They'll probably need to do the same thing."

"... I suppose it's better to _know_ where he is," Atem said quietly.

There was a minute of silence after Yuugi knocked on the door, before it opened to a rather harassed-looking Bakura. "Oh, Yuugi!" he said casting a quick, nervous glance over his shoulder.

"Bakura-kun, are you alright?" Yuugi asked, worried. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, no, it's really not-" Bakura started and then turned around sharply, exclaiming, "No! I told you not to move!" a moment before the Thief King came around the corner from the living room. Bakura abandoned the door, letting it swing open fully as he started trying to shoo the Thief King back. "You're supposed to be lying down!"

"I'm fine," the Thief King said in a flat voice.

Anyone looking at him would have disagreed with the statement. There were a number of gauze squares bordered by medical tape hiding gouges in his skin, making them perhaps more conspicuous than they would have been bare. Because the Thief King wasn't wearing a shirt, an elastic girdle, which held several broken ribs where they ought to be, was plainly visible. Yuugi recalled there being a particularly nasty lengthwise gash up one of his calves, but that wound was currently hidden under faded denim.

Despite his injuries, the Thief King was holding his back ramrod-straight and his chin high. He did make it look, through sheer force of will, as though he were unhurt. "What do _you_ want?" he demanded, glaring at Atem.

"It's a social-call," Atem replied in monotone.

"Get out of my house!" the Thief King snarled, taking a step towards them.

"_Nonononono!_ He's not gonna _do_ anything! _Please_ lay down!" Bakura pleaded, trying to gently push the Thief King back into the living room.

Atem's eyes narrowed and he looked like he was about to quip a response but then he glanced away and Yuugi watched a strange tension form in the line of his jaw.

"B-Bakura-kun, we just wanted to make sure everything was all right and you didn't need anything!" Yuugi interjected, hoping to defuse some of the tension.

"I think we're fine. I went to the store last night," Bakura replied with a strained smile. "It's just hard to make him take it easy."

"I see- okay." Yuugi nodded. "Then maybe, um, maybe we should just-"

"I owe you an apology," Atem interrupted.

Yuugi blinked in surprise and then turned to look at Atem who was looking directly at the Thief King again, a grave expression on his face. The little struggle between Bakura and the Thief King paused, both staring at the Pharaoh, looking a mix of shocked and baffled.

"You came before me seeking justice for your people and I called you a liar. I apologize for that. I... I couldn't believe what my father and Aknadin had done back then," Atem paused and looked away again. "I was... naive. I am only beginning to realize how narrow my view of the world has been up to now."

There was a long stretch of silence as Yuugi looked back and forth between his other self and Bakura's. He never would have expected Atem to say something like that to the Thief King, and the Thief King looked even more surprised by it. After a period of disbelieving gaping, the Thief King suddenly seemed to shake himself out of it and his expression turned furious, nearly homocidal.

"_Get out!_ GET OUT!" he screamed, pushing past Bakura and advancing on the door. "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

"Alrightifyou'reokaythenwe'lljustbegoingI'llseeyouinschoolBakurakunbye!" Yuugi blurted quickly before grabbing Atem's arm and taking off toward the stairs as fast as he could stumble.

Back on street-level Yuugi stopped to breathe, leaning a hand against the building and feeling like he'd just been running from a bear. Atem stood next to him, looking back up at the apartments with a strange, unreadable look. "Wh-what the heck was _that?_" Yuugi exclaimed as he caught his breath. He wasn't sure whether he was referring to the Theif King's apparent anger at being apologized to, or what had inspired Atem to do so in the first place.

"... I felt the need to clear my conscience," Atem said quietly. "My uncle caused the suffering of more people than can be counted. No matter what he's done since, the Thief King was one of the victims of that suffering. As the one whom inherited that sin, honor and decency required that I acknowledge what happened and apologize for it." He glanced back to the street and pushed his hands into his pockets, giving the slightest shrug. "I don't care what he does with it. I apologized for my father and for myself. It doesn't matter what a thief and a murderer thinks of me."

Yuugi glanced back up at the apartments and then nodded slowly. "I see..."

Ryou turned on the kettle and opened the fridge. He stood in front of it staring blankly at the contents for a minute as the kettle began to sputter, before pushing the door shut and making his way around the counter, onto the carpeted floor of the living room.

Thief was laying on the couch, thankfully still at last, and stretched out on his back like he was supposed to be. His head was turned sideways on a throw-pillow, his eyes gazing vaguely towards an old monster movie on the television. He didn't appear to be focusing, or even seeing the images on the screen as he lay there, his breath a little too labored and every so often the muscles in his brow pulled tight and the edges of his mouth twitched down for just a split-second, before his expression turned blank again.

Ryou padded over to the couch and knelt down next to his Thief, who blinked slowly and turned his eyes on Ryou. "What do you want to eat?" Ryou asked quietly, giving him a small, hesitant smile.

"... No more fish..." Thief answered in a low voice. His eyes flickered away momentarily, and then back to Ryou's. "Beef?"

"I could make nikujyaga," Ryou offered. "I bought orange yams."

"Yeah... that sounds good," Thief agreed softly.

"Okay." Ryou nodded, but didn't get up. He reached out his hand and carefully brushed messy hair away from the gauze patch on Thief's cheek. Thief turned his head, to follow more easily as Ryou bent over him. With their noses almost touching, Ryou whispered, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Thief lied, almost automatically.

"Okay," Ryou nodded, smiling softly and leaning down to press a very light kiss against Thief's lips. When Ryou started to straighten up, arms wrapped around his shoulders, keeping him close. Ryou sighed and let his head drop down against the pillow, his cheek flush with Thief's, and shifted his arms to make sure he didn't put any pressure on the damaged ribs.

There was a long silence, permeated by the ticking of the kitchen clock. After several minutes, the Thief's voice came in a tiny whisper, "It's not fair."

"I know," Ryou agreed and the Thief's arms tried to pull him closer.

"Your ribs," Ryou reminded, pressing his hands down against the couch to hold his position steady against Thief's insistent arms.

"It doesn't hurt."

"You'd say that even if it did," Ryou admonished. The Thief made no attempt to disagree with that statement. "Please don't make me worry," Ryou whispered next to his ear.

"... I'm sorry..." Thief mumbled in a helpless little voice.

Ryou picked his head up a little to find Thief's mouth again. The kiss lasted longer this time, and Thief seemed somewhat more awake. Afterwards, Ryou pressed another kiss to the Thief's forehead before pushing himself back to his feet.

"I'm going to start the nikujyaga," he said, smiling softly down at the Thief's slightly forlorn look. "You need to get your strength back. You'll heal much faster if you stop being foolish and let me take care of you."

...

...

A/N: Not going to write you a big fancy author's note right now, because my friends have made me a birthday cake and I need to go blow at it.


	4. Bakhura goes missing

"I'm home!"

No response.

Ryou frowned. Was Thief sleeping? He slid out of his shoes and stepped up into the hallway, padding on slippered feet towards the living room. The couch was vacant and the television was turned off. The pervasiveness of the silence felt unnatural and a nagging little knot of anxiety found its way into Ryou's chest as he walked across the living room to his bedroom.

That room was also empty. The little knot of anxiety began to grow, tugging at Ryou's spine. He checked the toilet and the bathroom*, empty. The anxiety spread to Ryou's heart and lungs and he started to panic.

"Thief?" he called, rushing through the apartment and opening every door, even the closets and balcony. "_Thief?_"

There was no response. The Apartment remained empty and oppressively quiet except for Ryou's frantic sounds. "Where are you?" he demanded of the air as he came to a stop in the middle of the living room, his breath coming rapidly and his eyes starting to burn.

The idea that the Thief had disappeared into thin air was ludicrous, Ryou told himself, and then told it to himself again for good measure. He couldn't just get misplaced anymore, he was a living human being with a physical body that couldn't go off on any astral-plane shenanigans. So then he had to have got up and wandered off physically, right? Right.

Ryou glanced toward the entryway and then walked over to examine the small table next to the door. There was a spare key that normally sat in a little English tea-cup along a few other odds and ends on that table. Ryou pushed some loose change a battery and a paperclip around the little cup with his finger; the key was gone. Part of Ryou felt relieved. Thief had left the apartment still in full possession of his body. But this also raised a new collection of worries.

Thief was walking around the city with four broken ribs and a generous helping of flesh-wounds. All of them had been healing quite well in the last two weeks, some of the smaller cuts were already covered over in fragile scar-tissue, but his ribs were only just starting to heal and any little bump could make them worse than before. And Ryou's imagination was already supplying the worst places the Thief might have gone and the sort of troubles that were likely to come to pass in such places.

Ryou walked back into the living room and sat on the couch, perched just on the edge of it with his whole body tensed. He bit his lip and stared at the blank television screen. He stood up and walked forward a few paces, realized he had nowhere to go and turned around part way, then stood their nervously, glancing around the empty apartment. Ryou rung his hands and blinked quickly.

What if he'd gotten into trouble? Thief did have a tendency to go to the kind of places and do the kinds of things that would get him into trouble. What if he didn't come back? What if he got himself injured even worse? What if he got picked up by immigration? What if he'd offended a yakuza boss and gotten shot? Nonononono, that was way too extreme. That couldn't have happened. Ryou was just getting carried away.

But still, what if he didn't come back? How would Ryou find him? When he was part of the Millennium Ring, he was always drawn back to it no matter what, and most of the time when he went somewhere disreputable, he took Ryou's body along with him. It hadn't been possible to lose him, except when Yuugi and Pharaoh had taken the Millennium Ring...

Ryou had just hit the 'send' button on his cell phone before he even realized he'd taken it out, and it started to ring Yuugi's number. Of course Yuugi hadn't done anything with Thief, or even Pharaoh, because Thief wasn't pocket-sized anymore, he was bigger than either of them. But it was already ringing, and Ryou needed to tell someone, needed someone to help him.

"Hello?" Yuugi's voice asked when the ringing cut off.

"He's gone!" Ryou blurted and his voice sounded hysterical in his own ears.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Thief! He's gone! I got home and he's gone! I don't know where he is! I don't know how to find him! He's injured! He shouldn't be wandering around alone! What if something _happens_ to him?" The words poured uncontrollably out of Ryou's mouth.

"Bakura-kun, please calm down!" Yuugi sounded worried now too. "We're going to come over right away and we'll figure this out. So please, try to stay calm, okay?"

Calm? How could he be calm at a time like this? "Okay," he said automatically.

"We'll be there in a few minutes."

"Okay." Ryou slid the phone back into his pocket and stared into space, hugging his arms around himself, over his churning stomach.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Ryou tore out into the hall and skidded as he turned the corner to reach the door. It wouldn't be Thief. It was just Yuugi. Thief had a key. But...? Ryou opened the door to see Yuugi, Pharaoh and Jonouchi standing on his porch. The tiny bubble of hope within him burst, but he forced a polite smile.

"I- please come in. I don't- I'm sorry, I shouldn't have bothered you, it's just- I don't know what to do. I panicked," Ryou stammered, stepping back to let them inside.

"It's okay, Bakura-kun. We don't mind at all," Yuugi said in an entirely too calm voice. "Please calm down and let's figure this out."

"So what, Mister Bad-Attitude just up and left?" Jonouchi asked, kicking off his shoes and leaving them in disorder as he stepped into the hall.

"I don't know! I came home and he wasn't here!"

"... He could be in the wind," Pharaoh suggested in a quiet voice.

"He wouldn't leave me!" Ryou snapped, glaring at the Pharaoh. "He _needs_ me! He wouldn't run away!"

"No, of _course_ not!" Yuug said quickly, shooting Pharaoh a stern frown and patting Ryou's back. "I'm sure he just went out for a minute."

"But he's injured!" Ryou wailed.

"Yeah, well, he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he," Jonouchi snorted.

"Jonouchi-kun, please don't joke," Yuugi said with irritation or stress sharpening his voice. "Now, did you look to see if he left a note or anything?" he asked, turning back to Ryou.

"I..." It had never even occurred to Ryou to look for one, it didn't seem like the sort of thing Thief would be likely to do. "No, I didn't look for that." He turned and trotted back to the living room. He riffled through the small accumulation of papers on the table and then darted across to the kitchen and tore apart the counters looking for a scrap of paper that might hold a clue to Thief's whereabouts. There was nothing. Ryou collapsed onto one of the stools at the counter and bit his lip.

"Um, well, is there anything-"

"He took the spare key, I think," Ryou said before Yuugi finished his question.

"Well that's good, I mean, it probably means he just went on an errand or something," Yuugi said brightly.

"Like robbing a bank," Pharaoh murmured and Jonouchi chuckled. Ryou ignored the comment.

"I really think you're probably worrying too much, Bakura-kun. I think we should just calm down and try to be rational." Yuugi's words mushed into an annoying drone as Ryou tuned him and the other two out, turning back to all the worst-case-scenarios his imagination could supply him with. Despite Yuugi's babbling, the sound of a key entering the lock on the front door sounded loud as thunder in Ryou's ears.

Ryou jumped to his feet and took off running for the door. He turned the corner into the entry hall just as it opened and saw Thief pushing it open with one hand, a collection of shopping bags hanging from the other. Ryou nearly threw himself at Thief, but remembered the broken ribs and skidded to a stop before they collided. "Where _were_ you?" he all but screamed.

"Sorry, I meant to get back before you," Thief said with a guilty wince. "I even got a taxi when I knew I was running late. I thought it would get me here faster, but then we hit traffic."

"Are you just incapable of thinking about other people?" Jonouchi drawled in a low, confrontational voice from the end of the hall and Thief's eyes snapped up, the muscles in his face and the rest of his body suddenly going tense, as though preparing for a fight.

"What are _you_ doing here?" he demanded.

"Bakura called us freaking out because you up and disappeared," Jonouchi spat back. "Y'ever heard of leaving a _note_ or something?"

"I'd planned to be back earli- Kch- _you_," Thief's expression turned into a snarl as he spotted the Pharaoh. "_Fine!_ Party's over! Everybody out now! Go home!" he commanded, clapping his hands for attention.

"I think we deserve an explanation," the Pharaoh said, narrowing his eyes. "Where were you?"

"Y'know, that little entitlement complex of yours is really pretty annoying. You don't _deserve_ anything," Thief sneered, kicking off a pair of unfamiliar and very new-looking shoes before walking barefoot into the hall. "But if you _must_ know, I was running a few errands."

"You didn't do anything _dangerous?_" Ryou asked, following inches behind Thief as he pushed past the others into the living room. "You're still _injured!_"

"I know, I know," Thief answered, sounding exhasperated. "Look, I got clothes and did a couple other little things. Nothing _dangerous_. And I got myself a cell _and_ a new one for you." He dropped his bags on the floor and pulled out a box for the newest, top-of-the-line cell phone, handing it to Ryou.

"I... Thank you..." Ryou mumbled, holding the box and giving it a slightly bemused look.

"And where did you get all that?" the Pharaoh asked. He was leaning against the kitchen counter now, giving Thief a suspicious look.

"I _bought_ it," Thief sneered. "Y'know, _with money_."

"And I wonder where you got _that_ from," Pharaoh sniffed, looking away.

"Didn't I tell you to _leave?"_

"There's no need to fight," Yuugi broke in quickly. "Thief-san is back and everything's okay."

Jonouchi snorted. "No need to fight? Bakura was freaking hysterical because this guy's too much of a _douche-bag_ to write a note. If you weren't an invalid, I'd punch you."

"I could hand you your own ass if I was blind and missing both legs," Thief scoffed. "Go home. I'm _injured_, remember? I need my _rest_. So get the hell out of my house."

"It's _Bakura's_ house!"

"Jonouchi-kun, I think maybe it is best if you leave," Ryou interrupted. "It's no good for Thief to get worked up in his condition."

"My _condition?_"

"Bakura-kun is right," Yuugi agreed quickly. "I feel like you're going to start really fighting if we stay much longer."

There wasn't any protest, and after the three had left the apartment, headed back towards Yuugi's house, Ryou sat down next to Thief on the living room couch. "You didn't do anything dangerous?" he asked again, in a soft, pleading voice.

"No. Don't worry. I don't go trying to pull any jobs when I'm not a hundred percent," Thief reassured, putting his arm around Ryou. "And I got the cell-phone now so you can call me if you get worried again." He grinned fondly.

"That is helpful," Ryou agreed, closing his eyes and leaning into Thief just a little, being mindful of his ribs.

*- It's pretty normal for the toilet and sink to be in a separate room from the bath/shower in Japanese architecture.

A/N: Ah... hm... no comments or explanations are coming to mind... Er, some of you are probably wondering why Bakhura is beat the hell up, I should write a shorty on how that falls into my interpretation of events... I'll try and get on that soon. Long-story-short is that that's the condition he was in right before he got put into the Millennium Ring and that's the way he came out again 3000 years later when the spell got broken... Actually, I guess that pretty much explains it, but I probably will still write a shorty on that too.


	5. The fanclub forms

Bakhura leaned against the brick pillar supporting the front gate, and soaked in the sunlight. This would probably be one of the last truly warm days of autumn, and worth savoring, before frost started creeping over the ground. Though relaxed, he kept his eye on the flow of students spilling out of the gates, and hadn't failed to notice that nearly all of them would pause to stare at him, and a large number were gathering into small groups on the sidewalk, whispering with each other.

After a time, one bold, older-looking (probably a third-year) girl approached him and Bakhura looked up at her with a raised eyebrow and an amused smile. She opened her mouth and said something incomprehensible, with the upturned ending tone of a question. He blinked at her, puzzled by the garble that she'd just spat at him. He thought it sounded like English, _maybe?_

"... Um, do you speak Japanese?" Bakhura asked her, tilting his head slightly.

The girl's eyes got a bit wide and she flushed, looking suddenly very embarrassed. "Oh, well, of course, I mean- it's just- Not that I would assume- I was just-"

Two other girls quickly swooped in to flank her, examining Bakhura with interest. "Hello! Are you a foreigner?" the one on the right asked.

"Do I sound like a foreigner?" Bakhura's grinned indulgently.

All three girls laughed at that and then the one on the left spoke. "Actually, your Japanese is perfect! Even your accent! It sounds kind of like my cousin's from Tohoku?"

"Good ear. I grew up in Odate," Bakhura semi-lied, smirking at the girl. Other students had begun to creep closer, intrigued by Bakhura's obviously not-Japanese features.

"That's great!" the middle girl giggled. "What are you doing in Domino?"

"I've been living here for about a year." Bakhura shrugged. "It's a nice city, I like being so close to the water."

There were unreasonably delighted murmurs and giggles among the peanut-gallery and Bakhura had to consciously refrain from rolling his eyes. "Wow, so, so, if you don't mind me asking, why are you standing out here by our school?" the girl on the right asked.

"Waiting for my friend. He's probably joking around with his classmates or something. I'm sure he'll be along shortly." Bakhura flashed them a smile with a bit of teeth.

There were entirely too many giggles at this point, it was rather ridiculous, and Bakhura felt very accomplished that he managed not to laugh at all the vapidity. "Um, maybe, um, who's your friend? Maybe I know them," the left-side girl asked coyly.

Bakhura chuckled. Why not? "Bakura Ryou, he's in class 2-C," he offered.

There was a sudden burst of excited chattering and whispers from the assembly, and the right-side girl exclaimed, "Oh he's in _my_ class!" and then burst into giggles.

"Wait, didn't _Bakura-kun_ move here from Odate?" the middle girl asked suddenly turning to her friend. Her eyes got wide and darted back towards Bakhura's face. "_L__ast year?_"

The whispers suddenly grew in intensity and left-side girl started to open her mouth to ask another question, but she was cut off by a far more lovely voice calling from just outside of the little crowd. "_Thief?_"

Bakhura brightened and turned toward Ryou, who was standing just outside the gate with the usual suspects, looking surprised. "Ryou!" Bakhura turned and walked over to him, his peanut-gallery parting like the Red Sea to let him through. "I was beginning to worry you were staying after," he said with a wide grin.

"No, I was just- What are you _doing_ here?" Ryou's face suddenly turned stern. "You're supposed to be _resting_. Don't you want to get better?"

"'Course I do. Maybe you're forgetting, healthy bone-growth needs plenty of vitamin-D." Bakhura smirked and pointed up towards the sun. "And I doubt we'll have too many more days like this for a while."

Ryou's disapproving face dissolved into a fond smile and he shook his head. "Alright, you win this time," he chuckled. He turned back towards the Pharaoh's cheerleaders and gave a little wave. "I'll see you guys tomorrow, okay?"

A few minutes later, Ryou and Bakhura broke away from the cloud of students clustered by the front gates and headed towards their apartment. Bakhura grinned wide and chuckled under his breath. Ryou looked up at him questioningly as Bakhura stuck out his hand expectantly. "Maybe I should carry your bag for you," he suggested.

Ryou blinked in confusion and then his cheeks started to get pink. "What? No- that's- You're injured! You're supposed to take it easy! I can carry my own bag!" he protested, flustered.

Bakhura laughed, "Of course, of course. I just thought it would be appropriate to offer."

"It's not appropriate at all! I don't see why..." Ryou trailed off, a perturbed look suddenly overtaking his face, and looked back towards the school and the peanut-gallery. "_What were you telling those girls?_" he demanded.

"Nothing," Bakhura laughed again. "They asked where I was from, so I told them Odate and they wanted to know why I was hanging out in front of the school, and I guess that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask when some stranger is lurking outside of a high school, and I told them I was waiting for my _friend_." He waved his hand dismissively, but couldn't tame the huge grin pulling his lips apart. "I don't know _why_ they were giggling so much."

Ryou's face was quite red and his expression indicated that doom was imminent. Bakhura laughed again.

"Oh my God, Bakura-kun! Who was that _gorgeous_ guy?" Shiratori Masako demanded, materializing in front of Ryou. He tried not to cringe as he slid his books into his desk and sank into his chair.

He'd spent the last seventeen hours thinking of things to say today, but he couldn't seem to remember what any of his brilliant ideas had been. "Er..." 

"Do you _live together?"_ Sakiyurai Reiko cut in. "He said he came here from Odate, that's where _you_ moved from isn't it? How long have you _known_ each other?"

"Is he your _lover?_" Nagumo Juri blurted, which caused the other two girls, and several other students in the classroom, to gasp in shock or burst into giggles. It made Ryou extremely uncomfortable and his face became very hot.

"Juri-chan! How can you ask something like that!" Masako scolded her friend, though the expression on her face was one of delight.

"You can't just say things like that, Juri-chan!" Reiko insisted, nodding furiously and trying not to smile.

"Get away from him, you harpies!" Anzu practically climbed over Ryou to put herself between his desk and the other girls. "Stop trying to turn Bakura-kun into your personal tabloid story!"

All three of Ryou's attackers put on a show of being offended at Anzu's insinuation. "That is _completely_ unnecessary, Mazaki!" Reiko put her hands on her hips and looked deeply insulted.

"Why do you have to be so _dramatic!_" Juri scoffed.

"We just wanted to know who that super cool guy from yesterday was!" Masako insisted.

"He was a _gamer!_ Happy now?" Anzu widened her stance just slightly, as though she intended to start a physical brawl. "Now leave my friend alone!"

"A gamer?" Juri paused and then her face fell a bit. "You mean that stupid kiddy card game crap?"

"Yeah, he plays Duel Monsters," Anzu crossed her arms and gave them a defiant look. "He's one of the best players there is too. Not as good as Yuugi, but definitely better than Jonouchi."

"What the _hell_, Anzu!" Jonouchi's voice shouted from the other side of the classroom.

Ryou dropped his face into his hands and wished he was anywhere else in the world.

"Oh man, why are all the hot guys such _nerds?_" Masako sighed.

"I don't care if he is a nerd," Reiko said with a little smirk. "He's gorgeous. And anyway, Bakura-kun's pretty nerdy too. They're perfect for each other!"

Ryou sank down lower, hoping that maybe he might disappear, or the earth would open up and swallow him. He wasn't even sure whether Anzu yelling at the girls and herding them away from his desk made it better or worse.

Japanese people really will stare and go "Oh my god, a foreigner, that's amazing," when they see someone not-Japanese walking around. Japan is a really homogeneous place, so someone of a different race really stands out, unlike in the West, where someone from another part of the world could be walking around and we generally wouldn't even assume they're foreign unless they're wearing really culturally distinctive stuff.

A/N: I actually wrote this a couple weeks ago, same time as I wrote the other ones, but I spent a while debating whether I wanted to put another scene in there. I decided against. Short and sweet and uncomplicated. There will be more future drabbles to follow this one, and maybe someday they'll have a name.


	6. Special delivery

Atem shivered, sleepily tugging the comforter up to cover his shoulder and pressing closer to Yuugi. He started to doze off again when he was interrupted by a voice that he should definitely not have heard in Yuugi's bedroom in the middle of the night.

"These type of latches are useless you know. Real popular in 1970s era buildings, but they were crap then and they're crap now," Bakhura's voice announced from the direction of the window.

Atem scrambled halfway to his feet, crouching on the mattress, and tried to remember what objects were around him that could potential be turned into weapons. "_What are you doing here?_" he shouted. He could feel Yuugi flail around in confusion and struggle to sit up on his left.

"Special delivery."

All Atem could see was a black silhouette against the night sky filtering through the partially open window, but he caught the movement, registered that Bakhura was throwing something at him, and pulled up the comforter to block the flying object.

The thing that had been thrown made a light thump against the covers and then a scratching sound of paper as it slid down to a level spot. Bakhura snickered.

Yuugi switched on the lamp and Atem blinked at the sudden light, squinting over at Bakhura, who was standing with a thoroughly relaxed posture, hands in his pockets and a smirk on his lips. Atem blinked a few more times, and lowered the comforter, leaning forward to find a manila envelope laying at the foot of the futon. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and glared back up at Bakhura.

Bakhura laughed and cast him a toothy grin. "Don't worry, mail-bombs come in bigger packages," he said and then cast his eyes back up toward the high window he'd apparently come in through. He reached his arms up experimentally and then dropped them again, one hand landing softly against his side, where the broken ribs must be. "No, that's a bad idea," he murmured.

"What is this?" Atem growled, gingerly picking up the envelope, which felt like it held a large collection of papers.

"Stuff," Bakhura answered, grabbing Yuugi's desk chair. "This'll work," he said with a little nod to himself and moved it under the window.

"What _is_ this?" Atem demanded in a louder voice, climbing the rest of the way to his feet and glaring.

"Papers. What does it look like?" Bakhura answered as he stepped up onto the chair and caught the edge of the window.

"Hey!" Atem shouted as Bakhura put a foot on the back of the chair and then launched himself up through the window. Atem begrudgingly noted that it was a very good jump.

"You really should get this latch replaced," Bakhura called back down after he'd managed to swing his legs out over the ledge without jarring his ribs. "These things are sturdy, but real easy to jimmy."

"What _is_ this?" Atem shouted again, waving the envelope.

"Open it and find out, genius," Bakhura called. "Hey, check it out, I can even re-lock this thing from the outside!" He pushed the window shut and a few moments later, the latch did indeed turn back around into the locked position. The next second, Bakhura had vanished.

"_Damn it!_" Atem threw the envelope down on the floor and glared up at the window and the night sky beyond.

"W-what do you think it is?" Yuugi asked, crouching down and picking up the envelope.

"Don't touch it, Yuugi. It might be dangerous," Atem warned.

"It's just paper, look I can bend it," Yuugi protested. "Mm, there's like a little pamphlet or something in here too." He held the envelope out to Atem. "Open it."

Atem gave the package a suspicious glare, but dropped down next to Yuugi and accepted it. It was the kind of envelope that tied shut with a string wound around a little button-thing. He undid the string and cautiously pulled up the flap.

Upon inspection, it did indeed seem to be filled with papers, and a small booklet down at the bottom. Yuugi settled down more comfortably next to him, pulling the blanket up over his lap and Atem tilted the envelope, shaking the booklet out into his hand. He stared at it, baffled. He recognized the cover of the booklet because it was identical to one sitting in the drawer of Yuugi's desk.

"A _passport?_" Yuugi asked, reaching forward and pulling at the front cover as Atem just stared at it.

On the first page was a black and white photo of Atem printed over patterned paper, along with a list of information and a name.

_Kemet, Atem_

Atem stared at it, not quite understanding what he was seeing. "It's _your_ passport..." Yuugi noted in a quiet, wondering voice, confirming what Atem was seeing that couldn't possibly be real.

Atem let go of the passport and Yuugi fumbled to avoid bending it while Atem stuck his hand into the envelope and pulled out the papers inside. There was a birth certificate for _Kemet, Atem_ from a hospital in Okinawa. There were death certificates for _Kemet, Fatima_ and _Kemet, Aknam_. There was a second envelope, this one properly sealed and declaring itself Atem's high school transcripts. There was a whole stack of official looking documents that he couldn't even understand. And there was a small sheet of notebook paper with a hand-written list scribbled on it.

_Atem Kemet -16_

_Mother-Fatima Father-Aknam_

_born in Okinawa_

_age 7 mother dies_

_moves to Dubai_

_age 14 father dies_

_moves to Cairo- lives with paternal aunt_

_age 16 moves to Domino_

_+ ID card_

_+ Japanese passport_

_+ transcripts two years high school_

A different hand had written in red ink and then crossed out _Deposit_ and then scrawled _Paid in full_ under that.

Atem stared at the list blankly for several minutes as Yuugi kept thumbing through the documents. After a while, he focused on one item on the list and then looked back at the envelope. He upturned the envelope and gave it a shake. A card fell out onto the comforter. _+ ID card_.

It was the complete documentation of an invented life, forged by an obvious expert. The fact of the forgery itched at Atem a little, this was incredibly illegal, but there was also a warm feeling of relief rising slowly within him. Documentation. This was what he needed. Now he had it.

Then he remembered where it had come from and he felt blank again. "W-why would he do this?" Atem stammered softly.

Yuugi shook his head slowly, staring down at the papers in his hands, the one currently on top a document assigning guardianship of him to his imaginary aunt until the age of 16. "... You need to thank Thief-san," Yuugi whispered.

Atem looked at Yuugi for a minute, trying to understand what he'd said, then turned back to the papers spread out over the comforter. "... I suppose I do," he breathed.

...

...

A/N: Somebody just got one-upped. Now I kind of feel like having them get into a who-can-be-more-mature battle.

Oh, and BTW in case you're wondering, Kemet is the old name for Egypt.


	7. First day of school

"I don't think I can do this," Atemu said, jittery like he couldn't remember ever being before.

Yuugi laughed. "Of course you can," he assured with utter confidence.

Atemu was fussing nervously with the sleeves of his new uniform. "People are going to ask me questions. What if I forget my story? What if they get suspicious? What if they hate me?" he worried, panic gnawing at him as if it were a tiny creature hidden somewhere in his chest.

"Nobody's going to hate you!" Yuugi insisted, stopping and grabbing Atemu's hands, preventing him from picking at a loose thread on his cuff. "You are going to be _fine_. And you're way ahead of most people when _they_ go to a new school because you already have _friends_ here!"

"But won't that make people even more suspicious?" Atemu protested.

"So what? Even if somebody figures you out, _who cares?_ You have friends already and you have legal documentation!"

"I have _illegal_ documentation," Atemu corrected.

"Stop freaking out." Yuugi rolled his eyes. "Okay, do you know what would happen if somebody from our school went to the police and told them that there was an ancient Egyptian ex-ghost in their class? They're going to give him a smack, escort him home and tell his parents he's been playing pranks on the police."

Atemu smiled a tiny bit but amused by the mental picture, but the little panic-creature was still chewing on him. "What about Bakura? Bakura hates me," he pointed out. "I'm going to make your group dynamic all awkward."

"Bakura-kun doesn't _hate_ you," Yuugi said, waving a hand dismissively. "It kind of seems like even Thief-san doesn't hate you anymore."

"I think he was just trying to one-up me," Atemu murmured.

Yuugi gave him a stern look. "It probably cost a lot of money to get those papers made. You should act a little more grateful."

"I _appreciate_ what he did, the result in any event," Atemu protested. "I'm just saying that I'm not counting on him having dropped all adversarial feeling towards me. He's hated me for three-_thousand_ years, Yuugi."

"Well you know _you _could make an effort too," Yuugi said.

"I am! I will!" Atemu insisted. "But it isn't just going to be okay tomorrow or something!"

"Bakura-kun!" Yuugi called suddenly, waving his arm in the air, and Atemu flinched. At the end of the block, Bakura paused to wait for them, having come from the cross-street.

"Good morning, Yuugi-kun," Bakura greeted with a smile as they reached him. "Good morning, Atemu-kun."

"Good morning, Bakura-kun!" Yuugi responded promptly, his voice entirely cheerful, and then where he normally might have immediately started into conversation, he paused, glancing at Atemu.

"G-good morning, Bakura. -kun," Atemu mumbled, squirming awkwardly. "I, um, I look forward to attending school with you."

"Sure, it'll be fun." Bakura gave him a polite smile. "I'm interested to see what kind of student you are."

"You mean if he's a mediocre slacker like me?" Yuugi asked with a sheepish grin.

"You do well in math, Yuugi-kun," Bakura said generously and started walking again.

"Not trig," Yuugi sighed. "I hate trig."

"Maybe you could find an upperclassman to tutor you," Bakura suggested.

"But I'm a _slacker,_" Yuugi laughed. "Besides, I'm going to take over the shop when Grandpa retires, and he says knowing my merchandise and my customers is more important than trigonometry. He actually told me he'd rather I keep up with gaming than my studies. Then Mom threatened to send him to a home." He started laughing again.

Bakura laughed with him. "It really does seem like game and comic shops are one of the few places large corporations aren't moving in. Even Kaiba-kun has kept his company a vendor and not a merchant."

Yuugi nodded, grinning. "A game shop isn't just a store, it's a social network! Big corporations can't compete with that!"

Atemu listened silently, watching the buildings drift past as they approached the school, and as they got closer there would be more and more students in Domino High uniforms walking in the same direction. Atemu's eyes met those of a boy he vaguely recognized, walking along the opposite sidewalk; he was staring back at Atemu who looked away nervously.

"Yuugi!" Jonouchi's voice rang out and Atemu looked up again, feeling rather relieved to see him. "Hey, guys!" He puffed, catching up with them. "Today's the day, huh? Y'nervous Atemu?"

"I'm fine," Atemu lied, poorly, and tried to return Jonouchi's grin.

"Don't worry, buddy!" Jonouchi slapped him on the shoulder. "You'll be fine!"

"Th-thanks." Atemu nodded.

Just before they reached the school gates, a small crowd seemed to coalesce around them and abruptly a handful of girls broke free, swooping in closer with bright, excited eyes. "Bakura-kun! Did you bring another foreigner friend? You know so many exotic people!" one of the girls exclaimed, catching hold of Bakura's arm and hanging off him as he started to flush and look vaguely horrified.

"Oh my gosh! Are you going to go to our _school?_ What's your name?" another girl asked, assaulting Atemu.

"I- I-" Atemu faltered.

"Are you related to Diabound-san?" a third girl demanded excitedly.

"_Diabound?_" Atemu grimaced. Of course the Thief King would have needed to assign himself a surname too, but _Diabound?_

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Gir- _What?_"

"_Juri-chaaan!_" several of the girls giggled in chorus.

"Hey! Hey! What the hell! We're trying to go to class here!" Jonouchi protested, attempting to guard Atemu's right flank. "Lay off already!"

"Don't be a jerk, Jonouchi! We just want to meet him!" a girl pouted.

"Atemu!"

Atemu felt a wave of relief and hope at the sound of Anzu's voice, and turned to see her shoving her way past one of the other girls. He started to open his mouth, to greet her, then she startled him by stepping right up into his space, grabbing both his hands and clasping them in hers as she gazed into his eyes.

"I'm sorry I couldn't walk with you today, Atemu," she said in a strange, really _girly_, voice. "I had to come in early, but I'm so _glad_ we'll be going to the same school now! We'll get to spend so much more time _together!_"

Atemu stared back at her, dumbfounded, and felt his face heat up. All the other girls were suddenly making sounds of bitter disappointment and fading back a little, giving them space. Anzu dropped one of his hands but kept hold of the other and started tugging him along. "You're supposed to go to the main office, right? I'll show you where it is!" she giggled in a similar style to the other girls, which Atemu thought sounded rather creepy coming from her.

The crowd parted and let them hurry through, with the others on their heels. Atemu glanced back at the collection of terrifying girls and then at Bakura who was wearing a profoundly irritated look on his pink face. "_Diabound?_" he demanded.

"Don't look at me!" Bakura put up his arms in an exaggerated shrug. "I didn't even know he'd ordered the papers until he brought them home. I _asked_ him to avoid any criminal activity or people engaged in it while he's injured."

"Not in _general?_"

"Oh _please_, do you really expect me to win _that_ argument?" Bakura snorted.

Atemu shook his head and looked back at Anzu again. He felt a little awkward, but not entirely displeased, as he glanced at their still linked hands. "Anzu... why are you holding my hand...?" he asked.

"I'm throwing the harpies off your scent," Anzu explained, casting Atemu a confident smirk and then glancing behind them to check the crowds. "Be careful what you tell them, they can twist anything you say into a shojo-manga setup."

"Don't worry, they'll get less crazy once they get used to you," Yuugi offered. "It's because you're new."

"Unless they find some new thing to obsess about..." Bakura intoned behind them.

They reached the main office at this point and paused in the hall. "Well, I guess we need to get to class," Anzu sighed. "If you get assaulted on the way up, try to outrun them, most of them wear awful shoes."

Atemu felt a tiny wave of panic as he realized he was about to be left alone, but he suppressed it. "Atemu," Yuugi was in front of him, smiling that way-too-sweet-for-a-teenager smile. "We'll see you soon. Don't worry, okay?" He put a hand on Atemu's arm and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Y-yeah. I'm fine," Atemu stammered, looking away. "I'll see you in a few minutes."

"See ya, man. Don't take too long." Jonouchi patted his shoulder as they started back up the hallway.

Atemu watched them disappear around the corner and then sighed, bracing himself as though he were about to go into battle. He turned back towards the office door and gingerly pushed it open, stepping hesitantly over the threshold. "Please excuse the intrusion," he called in a voice that sounded so tiny and nervous he was disgusted with himself.

"Good morning!" he was greeted immediately. "You must be Atemu Kemet-kun! I'm Student Body President Nagatsuka Takejiro, it's a pleasure to meet you!" president Nagatsuka announced enthusiastically and bowed to Atemu.

"Er- yes, that's me. It's a pleasure to meet you, Nagatsuka-kun," Atemu returned the pleasantry and bowed back.

"Welcome to Domino High!" Nagatsuka said with a cheerful smile. "I'm going to take you on a tour after the bell rings, and then I'll show you to your classroom. I hope you enjoy attending school with us!"

"Thank you for having me," Atemu said, trying to make his voice sound a bit stronger, but it still came out as somewhat of a mumble. "I look forward to studying with you."

...

...

I keep feeling like this is missing something, but I've been tossing it around for a while and I can't think of anything to add... Oh, I've sort of given this series a name now, Bits and Pieces refers to its nature as connected drabbles and also kind of how their building their lives and dealing with stuff in little bits at a time. Er, it sounded more clever in my head. But it needs a name already, so there y'go. I'm kind of wondering if I should do a classroom scene, for Atemu being introduced to the class and settling in a little, but I've not felt any inspiration for it... I'll probably just skip to after school, I have more fan-club shenanigans planned for that.


	8. The fanclub returns

"Diabound-san, do you work?" Hiroko asked. "I just wondered because you've had the leisure time to come here..."

"I do couriering, but I'm taking leave from work right now because of an injury," Bakhura explained with an easy smile. "It's very boring."

"Eh? You're injured?" Romi and Saori gasped in horror.

"Oh no! What kind of injury, Diabound-san?" Reiko asked, her eyes wide and shining dramatically.

"A couple broken ribs. It's not that bad," Bakhura shrugged and lifted up the hem of his T-shirt a bit so they could see the elastic girdle around his lower torso. "It's more annoying than anything."

All of the girls 'awwed' sympathetically in unison. "How did it happen, Diabound-san?" Honami simpered.

"I got hit by a guy trying to make the yellow-light. Admittedly, I was going against the crossing-light." Bakhura grinned and shrugged.

"You got hit by a _car?_" Ochiyo exclaimed in horror. "That's terrible!"

"He wasn't going that fast. I got off easy," Bakhura said.

"Oh please don't take it so lightly, Diabound-san!" Masako had the look of barely holding back melodramatic tears.

"Oh yes, what if it had been worse! Please be more careful, Diabound-san!" Saori wailed.

"_Thief!_"

"Hi Ryou!" Bakhura gave a cheerful wave and the tide of girls parted, giggling delightedly as they made a clear path between him and Ryou.

"Why are you-" Ryou's face was pink and he looked very annoyed. "Again! Why can't- Why are you _here_ again!" he flustered.

"It's boring at home," Bakhura explained, feeling a little sheepish, but much more amused than anything. "I wanted to see you sooner instead of just waiting for you," he admitted in a softer voice, the sentiment was sincere, but the decision to voice it was largely for the peanut gallery's reaction.

The cloud of girls all 'awwed' together, and Ryou's face went from pink to red.

"D-_damnit, Thief!_" Ryou huffed and grabbed his arm, pulling him in the direction of home. "They were finally _distracted!_"

"They were?" Bakhura asked, surprised and offended. Who dared be more attention-worthy than his Ryou?

"Do you... do this every day?"

Of course, he thought, his eyes snapping to the diminutive former god-king, whom was standing with his cheerleaders and raising an eyebrow at Bakhura. "So what if I _do?_" Bakhura demanded.

"This is only the second time..." Anzu sighed behind him, shaking her head.

"Are you _trying_ to-" Pharaoh started before the peanut gallery moved to envelope him as well.

"Atemu-kun! You know Diabound-san?" Romi squealed delightedly.

"Are you _related?_" Juri asked, bright eyed and excited.

"_NO!_" Bakhura was slightly disgusted to realize that he'd said that in perfect unison with Pharaoh. He snorted and shoved his hands into his pockets. "He's a spoiled little brat who's never had to work a day in his life," he asserted.

Pharaoh scowled. "And you call what you do _'work'?_"

Reiko hopped up and down a little in excitement. "_An epic rivalry!_" she exclaimed and the other girls squealed.

Ryou swore and hauled on Bakhura's arm. "We're leaving, Thief. _Now_," he ordered, dragging Bakhura away.

The prospect of pointless arguing with Pharaoh was weighed against time spent alone with a less-than-furious Ryou, and Ryou won. "Okay," Bakhura agreed, his face returning to a smile as it turned back toward Ryou.

The girls all started waving and giggling and good-byeing. "Bye, Diabound-san!" Ochiyo and Hiroko called.

"Take care!" Chiaki added.

"Be safe, Diabound-san!" Reiko shouted.

"Don't get hit by anymore cars!" Juri yelled succinctly.

Ryou stopped walking and went very still, and it took Bakhura a moment to notice, distracted by waving back at the fan-club, but then as he turned back to Ryou, his stomach abruptly sank. Oh shit. He stood still and silent for a moment, chewing nervously on his lip, before calling, "... Ryou?"

"... Don't get hit by a car?" Ryou asked quietly.

"I- to explain the ribs..." Bakhura mumbled, shifting on his feet. "It was the first thing that came to mind."

"... Of course," Ryou whispered and started walking again, dropping Bakhura's arm and moving without looking back at him.

Shitshitshitshitshit. "Ryou..." Bakhura whined, catching up in three steps and pacing him. "I'm sorry."

_The out of control car hit the left side of the sedan, killing the passenger, a six-year-old girl, on impact. The driver, her mother, died in the ambulance en rout to the hospital due to the injuries she had sustained during the collision. The driver of the other car is believed to have been drift-racing and has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, but the district attorney is hoping to up the charge to vehicular homicide._

"Fine. Whatever. It's perfectly logical," Ryou replied brusquely. "Better than saying you were blasted off a cliff by a magical dragon. Well done. Sounds completely believable."

"... I should have thought of something better," Bakhura mumbled.

"Stop worrying about it." Ryou shook his head.

"I'm sorry," Bakhura mumbled again. He'd been apologizing far too much in the last few weeks, more than the rest of his three thousand years combined, and always to Ryou.

Ryou sighed, slowing to a stop and let out a sigh. Bakhura waited beside him quietly. After a moment, Ryou turned, stepping into him, and leaned. His hand lighted on Bakhura's elbow and his fingers gathered around the fabric of his sleeve, clinging there. "It's okay," he whispered. "But you know I wouldn't forgive you if that happened... You're not allowed to leave me like that."

"Yeah, I know." Bakhura nodded, circling his arms around Ryou.

They stood still for a little while, ignoring the other occupants of the sidewalk, before Ryou stepped back, letting his hand slide down Bakhura's arm until their fingers hooked together at the bottom. Ryou sighed again, glancing around the street, perhaps worried that there would be other Domino High students hiding somewhere, then looked back at Bakhura.

"I want something fried," he announced. "Not like a donut that came out of the oil at five this morning, something still hot, like a funnel cake. Or a fritter. Something that looks like a heart-attack on a plate."

Bakhura grinned, relieved that he had apparently only made a minor fuck-up this time. "There's that little hole-in-the-wall at South Center that runs the mini-donut machine all day," he suggested.

"Ah, yeah, that sounds good." Ryou nodded, a little smile shaping his lips.

"And we could go to the retro video-game store while we're there and get that part to fix your NES." Bakhura laced his fingers with Ryou's and walked close enough that his shoulder bumped up against the back of Ryou's.

"Mm, I don't think they'd have it," Ryou said, tilting his head slightly. "They'd probably be able to order it though..."

"And I could buy you something pretty!" Bakhura added hopefully.

"Still no," Ryou said firmly.

"Pffff... Dinner?"

"That I'll take," Ryou said with a nod and a little grin.

...

...

Having Bakhura refer to his occupation as being a courier probably raised a few eyebrows and made readers go 'well that's random,' but it is actually very practical for how I plan to structure his 'job' in the future. Just bare with me on this one, I think it'll pan out.

In the newspaper-clipping thingy I referred to a 'district attorney' I really don't know what the local legal structure is like in Japan, and I can't be bothered to take the hour+ it would probably take me to find the right term, which I'd then have to translate, making it kind of illegitimate anyway. I watch a lot of Law and Order, 'district attorney' ends up pretty high in my working-vocabulary.

The clipping thing dropped in there with no explicit explanation also kind of goes against my usual writing sensibilities, but for some reason my brain liked it this time.

There may be daily updates on this for the rest of the week; I just finished up a chapter that was kind of a bridge between an ahead part I'd already written and this one, so suddenly there's three chapters lined up and written.

Man, I have been putting the random name-generator to good use in this series!


	9. Intimidates with crazy

"I'm going to go get a drink, do you guys want anything?" Ryou asked, pushing himself out of his seat.

"Only if you're paying- _Ow!_" Jonouchi cut off as Anzu slapped the back of his head.

"I'd like a lemon tea. I could come with you if you want, Bakura-kun" Anzu said, picking up her change purse and pulling out 200 yen.

"No, it's fine." Ryou smiled, accepting the coins. "Anything else? Yuugi-kun? Honda-kun?"

"Could you get me a Coke?" Yuugi asked, digging for the coins rolling around loose in his school bag.

"Sure," Ryou said, waiting patiently for Yuugi to fish out the right change.

A minute later, he stepped out into the hallway, where a number of students were strolling casually in or out on their lunch break, headed towards the back stairs and out the door adjacent to the paved basketball area. Nobody was playing today, since the weather had turned gray, and the clouds held an imminent threat of rain, but there was a pleasant crispness in the air that Ryou enjoyed. He took a deep breath and ran his fingertips lightly along the texture of the bricks as he strolled down the wall.

When he turned into the alcove that held a long, trough-style sink and two hot/cold* vending machines with nearly identical contents, he noted three other students had taken shelter there to smoke. It seemed rather bold of them, since plenty of people, including faculty, tended to visit these vending machines during lunch hour, but apparently they were trusting the bad weather to keep any teachers with a mind to punish them indoors.

Ryou ignored them and walked toward the vending machines. Apparently, however, the boys took offense to being ignored, or maybe they were just bored. "Hey _fag!_" Aida Sumio, class 3B, shouted. Ryou clenched his teeth and his hands tightened into fists, the change digging into his palm. Fucking high school. He kept walking and stopped in front of the vending machines, scanning the rows to find a lemon tea like Anzu had asked for.

A hand landed on his shoulder and spun him around violently, before shoving him into the front of the vending machine. "Y'deaf? I was talking to you," Aida demanded, the other two, also third years, Ryou thought one of them was named Shima, laughed, standing a few paces away, cigarettes in hand.

"Sorry. Didn't hear my name," Ryou responded in a low monotone.

The other two laughed again and Aida grinned maliciously. "Oh no? That's funny, I think I said 'Hey _fag_'," Aida sneered, shifting his grip on Ryou and shoving him back into the vending machine again.

"Well then I think you have me confused for someone else, because that is not my name," Ryou growled.

The other two howled. One of them called, "Oh damn, Aida, she sure told you!"

"Oh really? I heard you're shacked up with that foreigner who looks like he lost a fight with a weed-whacker." Aida grabbed Ryou's chin, forcing his face up. "So what are _you_, huh? Top or bottom?"

Ryou glared back silently as the other two kept laughing and heckling nearby.

"So what's up, little girl? That trashy foreigner your boyfriend or not?"

"Actually," a new voice broke in and Ryou's eyes widened in surprise, "it's more like the mentally-unstable stalker he's resigned himself to being unable to shake." A heel landed against the plexiglass front of the vending machine on either side of Ryou's head. Aida dropped his chin and reeled back a few steps, staring, and Ryou turned his head up to see just a little bit of the underside of Thief's face from his perch on top of the vending machine.

"W-when- How the _fuck_ did you get up there?" Aida demanded.

"Oh, it's not really hard. I mean, what is this thing, maybe two meters tall? That's nothing," Bakhura answered, and then a moment later he threw himself off of the vending machine and landed in a graceful crouch between Ryou and Aida. He straightened up, his back to Ryou, as Aida stumbled away a few more steps and his back-up singers stared, having apparently forgotten how to heckle.

Bakhura made a short laugh that sounded two steps away from a giggle and continued. "Y'know, I think it was when leaving Odate didn't get rid of me that he just kind of gave up. Of course, he wasn't just trying to get away, really, I think he really left Odate because of the rumors, the looks, you know, how people kept ending if they bothered him."

Ryou gaped, Thief wasn't really going to tell them about _that_, was he?

"Okakura was really lucky he was wearing a helmet when the breaks on his bike failed. They say he might actually walk again. Eventually."

Wait, _what?_

"Of course, Hideki wasn't as lucky, turns out he didn't have fire insurance. Careless, so careless," Thief went on in a cheerful tone. "And it was just awful when Shizuma tripped down the stairs like that. It took seven titanium pins to piece his femur back together. I can't remember how many they put in his arm... Left a nasty scar."

"_Thief!_" Ryou exclaimed. Where the hell was this tripe coming from? Ryou didn't even _know_ a Shizuma!

"Oh don't worry, Ryou, those pins are high quality stuff. They've found that bone fuses to titanium and it's not even magnetic so the doctors can still use the MRI machine if his seizures come back." Bakhura chirped brightly, glancing back to Ryou with a grin.

"_Stop_ it!" Ryou said; this was completely ridiculous and stupid –although... it was kind of funny to watch the expression on Aida's face...

"The strangest one was definitely when Nogi found his pet dog in a rice sack on the kitchen table though," Bakhura continued. "Poor creature really didn't deserve that. If only it had a more thoughtful master, maybe it would still be alive."

"THIEF!" Ryou shouted, grabbing his arm and pulling him back, glaring. "That is _enough!_ You're not even supposed to _be_ here! This is a _closed campus!_ You could be _arrested!_"

Thief laughed. "_Arrested?_ That's ridiculous! All the times the police came over to ask me questions and I've _never_ been arrested! I think they just like the tea I make."

"It's a crime just _being_ here! If anybody _sees_ you-"

"Well then, I suppose I just have to make sure nobody sees me," Thief said with utter confidence, giving Ryou a jovial little smirk before looking back at Aida. "You wouldn't tell anyone right? I mean, we're all friends here, aren't we! What was your name again? Oh, never mind, I can find out."

"_Thief_..." Ryou growled. This was getting completely out of hand. No. It had never been in hand to begin with. "Get _out_ of here!"

"I'm sorry, Ryou," Thief said, giving him a horribly insincere apologetic face. "I _know_ I shouldn't bother you at school, you have to focus on your studies... It's just so hard, when I get an idea in my head I just have to _do_ it. I really need to learn some impulse control..."

"GO!" Ryou shouted, giving him a shove.

"Bye, Ryou! See you later!" Thief sang happily, before jumping to the top of the trough-sinks, running along the top and making a leap to the ledge of a second story window. He managed to land a foot on the two inches of ledge that stretched out past the side of the window and out of view from inside the building. From there clawed his way up to the roof and disappeared.

Aida and his friends stared at the spot where Thief had last been visible, standing absolutely still and saying nothing. Ryou groaned and turned back towards the vending machines, pushing in a few coins and mashing the selection button with more force than was strictly necessary. Lunch period was going to be almost over by the time he got back to the classroom.

...

Aida Sumio groaned when his alarm went off in the morning. He hadn't slept well.

It took a few tries for his flailing hand to find the alarm clock and turn it off. He debated the merits of skipping school for about two minutes, like he did most mornings, and then, like most mornings, pushed himself up and glared around his room.

A flash of red caught his eye and he leaned forward to find a small envelope on top of his comforter, near his feet. He stared at it for a little while, puzzled, before picking it up and pulling out the note-card inside.

_Aida Sumio_

_Attends- Domino High School, Class 3B_

_Birthday- February 3rd_

_Residence- 84659 Block 18 Domino City, Toyama Prefecture_

_Parents- Aida Motoki and Okuda Fumiyo - divorced_

He stared at the note-card for a very long time that morning, and considered skipping school again very seriously.

...

...

*Most drink vending machines in Japan dispense both hot and cold beverages. And sometimes soup!

A/N: O hei, Bakhura is in ur hous, fuckin' terrifying u.

I hope it was clear that Bakhura was completely making shit up... This is actually a spring-board for some hilarity/angst to come very soon. Next chapter, probably. The sociopath act was planned from a couple months ago, but the note only came up this week when the next bit of plot came into my head and delighted me. Oh yeah, here I am, teasing you with vague hints. Don't worry, the next chapter is pretty much finished, I'll put it up tomorrow.

I placed Domino in Tomoya prefecture because it has a nice natural harbor, and we see a lot of docks in canon, so I think shipping is important to the city.


	10. Ryou yells at people

Ryou had been getting odd looks all morning. He found people staring at him whenever he turned around, with curious, even suspicious, expressions. It was making him very nervous. What were they all thinking? What was going on?

After their homeroom teacher left, Hirano Honami, who sat level with him in the next row over, leaned his direction a little, her eyes wide and curious and holding that frightening delusions-of-shojo-manga sparkle to them. "Bakura-kun..." she asked quietly, a tiny little smile on her lips that looked like she was trying to hold back a giggle. "Is Diabound-san rich?"

Ryou frowned at her, puzzled. He wasn't really sure what inane, fan-girlish thing he'd been expecting her to ask, but that hadn't been on the list. "What?" he asked and then shook his head. "That- th- Why would you ask that? That's not- That's really rude!"

Honami blushed and brought her hand up to her mouth to catch a giggle. "I'm sorry, Bakura-kun. You're right. Forget I asked."

What the hell was _that?_ Ryou shook his head and looked down at his literature notebook, feeling ruffled and more confused than before.

"Bakura-kun," a far more welcome voice called next to him and he looked up, feeling slightly relieved.

"Anzu, thank god. What insane girl-rumor is going around today?" he asked desperately.

"Er, I think this one might have actually started on the boys' side..." she said, her eyes darting away from Ryou's. "And it's kind of... the entire school now. People who I'm pretty sure don't even know you are babbling about it too..."

Ryou's stomach sank. That sounded really bad. "W-what is it?"

"Well..." Anzu's face screwed up into something like a wince and she bit her lip for a moment before explaining. "Half the school thinks you're dating an international mob-boss. The other half is saying he's a top-rank assassin."

Ryou stared at her, trying hard to process what she'd just said and failing to make any logic of it. "W-_what?_"

"They're saying Thief-san threatened to kill a guy who was hassling you or something..." Anzu mumbled, fidgeting. "Um... I thought you should know..."

Ryou stared at her a few moments longer before suddenly standing up and rounding on Honami. "He's not _either_ of those things!" he exclaimed in a voice loud enough that all eyes in the classroom turned to him. "He-he's got nothing to do with any organized crime! That's ridiculous!"

"Definitely not _'organized'_."

Ryou turned to glare at Atemu, who was now chewing on his knuckle and trying to look innocent. Yuugi was also giving the former pharaoh a warning look. "_You_ shut up!" Ryou snapped. His eyes then swept angrily over the rest of the classroom staring at him. "Th- Diabound-san does _not_ kill anyone and he's _not_ a secret mafia boss! That's _completely_ ridiculous and anyone who thinks that is being _completely_ foolish!"

"What about the cat?" Hiraga Naizen, two desks forward and one over from Ryou's, asked.

Ryou frowned, tilting his head slightly. "What cat?"

"Aida Sumio's cat!" Kitagawa Misayo, one seat back and three over, offered. "They say Aida-kun woke up and found his cat in his bed with its throat cut!"

"I heard it was on the kitchen table!"

"I heard it was _frozen!_"

"I heard its head was cut off!"

"I heard there was a note that said Aida-kun was _next!_"

"N-none of that happened!" Ryou exclaimed. "He _likes_ cats and he doesn't _kill_ people, he just has a really _bad_ sense of humor! All he did was make an empty threat to shake Aida up a little! He never actually _did_ anything! He's not a mobster!"

"Oh, _poor_ Bakura-kun! Totally innocent of his lover's life of _crime!_" Sakiyurai Reiko exclaimed, swooning dramatically.

"_I am not!_" Ryou shouted. "Stop saying that! And stop _laughing!_" Ryou glared at Atemu who had put his head down into his folded arms, hiding his face, his shoulders visibly shaking.

"Hey Bakura," Jonouchi called, wearing a wide, mirthful grin. "You want me to knock his face in for you? I still owe that guy a smack."

"_No_, Jonouchi! That's _dangerous!_ You'll be _killed!_" Shiratori Masako exclaimed.

"Okay, _that_ I'll agree with. Thief-san would kick your _ass_, Jonouchi," Anzu said flatly.

"I can knock his face in _myself!_" Ryou shouted.

"Oh my god, that's _right!_ You keep calling him 'Thief' like a pet-name!" Hirano Honami exclaimed and Ryou could feel the argument about to get a lot worse. "He's not an assassin, he's-"

"International jewel-thief!" Nagumo Juri shrieked, jumping up and down excitedly. "International jewel-thief! Like Lupan!"

All hell promptly broke loose. "No no no!" Ryou shouted, flailing his arms. "Bakura-kun! Does he give you priceless diamonds?" "Royal jewels of lost empires?" "Faberge?" "Cartier?" "_Stop it!_ You're all being _stupid!_ Stop _laughing_, Atemu!"

"What the hell is going _on_ in here?"

The classroom suddenly became quiet as everybody turned to look at Hisayoshi-Sensei, who had just walked in the door. She was wearing a mix of irritation and bemusement and was giving her students, half of whom were out of their seats, a good glare. She looked particularly hard at Nagumo Juri, a girl who could usually be trusted to tattle on herself and at the moment looked like she was about to explode.

Then she did. "_Bakura-kun is dating a super-sexy international jewel-thief!_" she shrieked.

Hisayoshi-Sensei stared at her for a moment with a blank expression and then pointed her finger firmly at Juri. "Detention," she said firmly. "It is not nice to make up ridiculous rumors about your classmates."

"But it's _truuuuuue!_" Juri wailed, wiggling around in her seat.

"It is _not!_ You just made that up _two minutes ago!_" Ryou exclaimed.

"Bakura, please _sit_ down and use your _inside_-voice," Hisayoshi-Sensei said, giving him a pointed look. Ryou collapsed into his seat and dropped his head down on his desk, putting his arms over his head as though it was an earthquake-drill and resisting the urge to scream.

...

...

A/N:

The next part is a follow-up to this one, but it's really long! It ended up coming out to 12 pages. So now I'm debating whether I should still just post it as one piece or if I should break it up into a cliff-hanger. Thoughts?

Er, if anybody doesn't know who Lupan/Lupin ("International jewel-thief! Like Lupan!") is, he's an extremely popular anime character. Honestly, he's retro, he's from, like, the 70s, but he is still really popular and I got a capsule toy with a Lupan figure in it just a couple years ago from a machine in Konosu. One of the Lupan movies was directed by Miyazaki, so that'd probably be the context many of you would recognize him from, but he had a whole long series and multiple movies. He's like a young, goofy version of Danny Ocean.


	11. Ryou yells at Bakhura

The peanut-gallery was larger than usual today, and it even seemed to have garnered a number of male members. There was a notable change in the whisper-to-giggle ratio as well. Bakhura was intrigued by this and vaguely confused by the questions he was getting.

"Um, um, do you mind me asking how you got that scar...?" Romi said shyly, pointing to her own right eye.

"Clumsiness." Bakhura shrugged a little. "I was lucky not to lose the eye. See it's good that I was hit from a downward angle because that made it bounce off my eyebrow and skip past the eye." He illustrated by drawing his finger down his face as he spoke.

There were many quiet whispers. "B-but, um, what _was_ it? How did it _happen?_" Romi pressed, her eyes cast down and her face flushed.

"A street-fight," Bakhura answered; that was sort-of true. "Years ago."

"How many other countries have you lived in?" Hiroko asked.

"Just one. My family came from Egypt and I've spent a few years there."

"Do you travel much?"

"Not at the moment."

"What's the value of a five-carat diamond?"

"One and a half million yen." Bakhura paused after answering that, frowning slightly. Wait. That was a kind of incongruous question. "What?" He looked oddly at the boy who had asked. The boy paled a little and tried to hide in the crowd that had suddenly started whispering madly.

"YOOOU!" Bakhura turned just in time to see Ryou charging toward him, looking absolutely livid.

"Wha-" Bakhura started and then stumbled as Ryou slammed into him and promptly started hammering his fists against Bakhura. "What the _hell_, Ryou?"

"_Stupid! Gonna-! Oh my god I can't-! Bastard!_" Ryou fumed, shoving and hitting at random.

"Ribs! Ribs!" Bakhura shouted, grabbing at, and after a few tries managing to catch, Ryou's wrists to stop the assault. "What the hell is _wrong_ with you?" Bakhura demanded; he was pretty sure he hadn't done anything terrible today.

Not like yesterday, anyway.

"What's wrong with _you?_ I _told_ you I was going to get harassed and this is _worse_ than getting my ass kicked and it's _your fault!_" Ryou shrieked and struggled against his hold. "None of this would have _started_ if you hadn't shown up at my _school_ because you think it's _funny!_ And now you made it _worse_ and the _whole god-damned school_ is saying stupid shit about me and won't leave me alone! I can't _believe_ you _did_ this to me! _For fun!_ I just want to be ignored and get through high school with as little pain as possible and you're _ruining_ it! I _hate_ you! This isn't a _game!_ This is my _life!_"

The world stopped. He couldn't move. He couldn't breath. He couldn't see anything except Ryou's angry face still screaming at him, the words now meaningless. Oh God, he'd fucked up. He'd fucked up bad. Ryou had gotten his wrists away from Bakhura and was hitting and pushing again. Bakhura stumbled back, he almost turned his ankle he was so lacking for coordination, and then he started running.

...

"And everything's just a joke to you and you don't even think about what _I_ have to _deal_ with! I'm always cleaning up _your_ messes and-"

"_Bakura-kun!_ BAKURA-KUN!"

His eyes, wet with angry tears, opened to find Anzu next to him, roughly shaking his shoulder and staring. "Bakura-kun, he's _gone_," she said, looking at him with a strange expression.

"W-what?" he mumbled, confused, looking around and bewildered that the Thief was indeed nowhere to be seen. "Where did...?"

"He ran away, Bakura-kun," Anzu said quietly.

Ryou became aware of the crowd still standing around him, their eyes all focused on him. Their stares assaulted him, like the uncomfortable heat of a spotlight, only accompanied by a greasy feeling. He'd ignored them, or maybe even been oblivious to them, until Anzu had stopped him, and suddenly they were all pressing on him, and he felt nauseated.

"W-why did he- he just- I don't-"

"... It was after you said 'I hate you,' Bakura-kun," Anzu said in a voice barely above a whisper.

The blood froze in Ryou's veins. Had he said that? How could he let _that_ slip past without even noticing? How could he be stupid enough to _let_ it? "Oh god," he whispered. "Oh god." His knees buckled and he sank to the ground, staring at nothing.

Anzu sank down next to him, a hand still on his arm. He felt numb and thought he was starting to shake. This was bad. This was very bad. "He went that way," Anzu whispered, pointing down the street.

Ryou was back on his feet in an instant and running.

...

"_Pickuppickuppickup!_" Bakhura whined desperately, his phone cradled in two hands against his cheek.

After the second ring there was the click and then Malik's voice, "Morning. What's u-"

"_I fucked up!_" Bakhura blurted.

There was a startled moment of silence, and then, "What?"

"I fucked up! I fucked up so _bad!_ Ryou _hates_ me! I didn't _mean_ to! I didn't think it was that _serious!_" Bakhura's breath was coming fast and his throat was too tight and his chest hurt, just under his collarbone.

"Slow down! _Slow down!_" Malik demanded. "Ryou does _not_ hate you and what the hell _happened?_"

"He _does!_ He _said_ he does!" Bakhura gasped, stumbling on nothing; he couldn't even walk right.

"Can I _please_ get some _context?_" Malik asked.

Bakhura tried to reign in his breathing as he walked down the narrow alley. "I- I went to his school and stood outside to wait for him because it was a nice day and I wanted to walk with him, b-but then these girls started asking me questions and it was _really funny!_ I mean, I didn't even _say_ we were living together, but they jumped to it and they were all excited and it was _funny!_ And then I went again a couple days later and Ryou got all annoyed because the girls were making up comic-book fantasies about us, and that was funny but Ryou was afraid he was going to get beat-up. So I tailed him for a few days and when some guys _did_ try to mess with him, I shook them up a bit, and I _might_ have broken into one of their houses and... left a note to scare him. I- I don't know what happened today, but Ryou's _really_ mad and he just started _yelling_ and _hitting_ me and he said he _hates_ me."

"Oh Jesus," Malik sounded a little muffled and irritated. "He didn't _mean_ that, Bakhura, he was pissed off. He didn't know what he was saying, he was just venting."

Bakhura shook his head, barely seeing where he was going. "Ryou's _always_ in control! He doesn't _make_ mistakes! He always says what he _means!_"

"No, that's bullshit," Malik retorted. "_Everybody_ says stupid shit when they're mad. He probably didn't even realize he said it."

"What if he did?" Bakhura whispered, his feet stopping and leaving him motionless in the middle of an alley. "I can't- I can't-"

"He _didn't_," Malik insisted. "That's completely asinine. He's not going to just turn around and hate you because you embarrassed him."

"I don't know how to fix it. I don't know if I _can_ fix it!"

"Would you _stop_ freaking out? This _isn't_ a big deal! You're blowing it _way_ out of proportion!"

"You weren't _there!_" Bakhura protested. "You don't _know_ that! You're not even _listening!_"

"I _am_ listening and you sound like a damn _ten-year-old!_" Malik shouted back. "This is _nothing!_ You need to go _talk_ to him and just apologize for outing him and he'll be mad for a while but _it will be okay!_"

"You're not _listening!_" Bakhura accused again. "You didn't see how _angry_ he was!"

"This is _stupid!_"

"Why did I even _call_ you?"

"Would you _shut up_ and _pretend_ you're an adult for _half a minute?_"

"God _damn_ it _shut up!_" Bakhura shouted, frustrated and near hysteria. "You're _useless!_" he screamed and threw the phone at the pavement.

He froze.

Bakhura stood there silently for a few seconds, staring at the phone. Its screen was black and he could see the green color of the inside parts showing through where the corner had broken off. "Shit," he whispered. He dropped down and grabbed up the broken phone and the battery cartridge that had skidded away a few feet. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Bakhura whimpered slightly as he fumbled the battery back into its place and tried to make the back stick on again, but it refused to click into place. He mashed the power-button down and stared at the phone for a few seconds, holding his breath. Nothing happened. The screen was still black, the phone was still cracked and the inside parts were still showing through the missing corner.

Bakhura bit his lip until he could taste blood. He slowly climbed to his feet, the broken phone clenched tightly in one hand. He stared up and down the alley, his body starting to shake. Now he'd _really_ fucked up.

...

...

So, I guess I decided on the cliff-hanger, and look at what a good cliff-hanger point I found to break it! Tomorrow's update will continue from the moment this one ends. For those of you wondering "Why is Bakhura acting like a pre-teen?" remember, he is not sane, and while he looks about 20, he doesn't think at 20. He has a lot more intellectual capacity, knowledge, and tactics etc, but emotionally I put him at about a 12-14 level (although, not being assaulted by 12-14-year-old hormone levels makes him a little less erratic than that...)

I kind of wonder how many of you have been reading the bits with Bakhura's fanclub and thinking '"peanut-gallery"?' Er, since that was a long generation out of date when _I_ picked it up, I don't know if it ever makes its way into parlance except for people trying to be cute with it... I'm not entirely sure how it ended up in my working-vocabulary. The 'peanut-gallery' was what the live studio-audience was referred to in the Howdy Doody show (that's what Woody's show in Toy Story 2 was an homage to. And... I have never even seen an old rerun of, actually... damn, my americana is lacking.) I think of it as meaning 'excitable, responsive audience'... So, yeah, there's that explanation for my out-of-date colloquialism use.


	12. Bakhura goes crazy

It had taken a few minutes for Ryou to remember the phone in his pocket. He'd skidded to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk and hit speed-dial. "Please _please_ pick up," he whispered, bringing it to his ear.

Straight to voice-mail. Was the line busy... or was the phone unable to receive calls? "No. No," Ryou whined, his fingers tightening around the phone before he pushed it back into his pocket and started running again.

He stopped for three more tries. Always straight to voice-mail.

Ryou's lungs were on fire and his legs ached, and he almost didn't feel it when his phone vibrated. Almost.

He grabbed the phone and accepted the call without looking at the screen. "_Thief?_" he asked, breathless and barely able to get the name out.

"_Shit no!_ The dumbass _smashed_ his fucking phone or something!"

"M-Malik..." Ryou whispered. "_He called you?_"

"He's being _fucking unreasonable!_"

"Of _course_ he's being unreasonable! He's _mentally unstable!_" Ryou shouted.

"Are you _looking_ for him? You _need_ to _find_ him!"

"I'm _looking!_" Ryou wailed.

There was a pause and then Malik's voice came in an urgent rush. "He's near the marina! I heard a ship's horn when I was talking to him!"

Ryou gasped and spun around to his right, taking off towards the docks. "I'm going! I'm going!" he shouted, but he couldn't hear the response because the hand holding his phone was now swinging with his body's motion as he put on a new burst of speed.

...

Bakhura crouched on the ground, shaking and staring at the pavement. He knew he wasn't thinking right, but for the life of him he couldn't remember how right-thinking felt. Everything was gone. Ryou was gone. There wasn't anything without Ryou. The world had imploded around him and the old nightmare-images were playing across his eyes again. Everything broken. Everything dead and gone. Everything taken away.

He pulled at his hair and panted unevenly, rocking back and forth slightly and whimpering. He did it to himself this time. He ruined everything. He broke the world. Everything was gone and it was his fault. There wasn't anything to do. There wasn't anyone to blame. It hurt so much and it wouldn't stop. The emptiness wouldn't stop hurting.

Kill the emptiness. Kill it. Fill it with blood. That's what they always used to say. The voices. He hadn't heard them since he'd come back from Egypt. Even they weren't here with him now. Nothing was. No one was telling him what to do. God, how he wished someone would tell him what to do.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap. Was he running? No, he was still on the ground, he could see it right in front of him. He heard running from the empty world outside. He needed to hide. Hide from the spears and swords. Hide from the fire and molten gold. But he couldn't move.

And then there was the tip of a shoe just at the edge of his vision, standing on the pavement he was staring at. "Get up!" a commanding voice ordered him. Instructions. Instructions. Somebody would tell him what to do. He wouldn't have to think.

He got his feet under him and pushed himself clumsily up. His head was heavy; it took too much effort to lift it and when he did everything was blurry. He blinked and rubbed at his wet face.

"Go home, you mad idiot!"

"No no the fire..." Bakhura mumbled and choked. "Can't go back- can't- the fire-"

A hand grabbed him roughly by his shirt and another slapped him hard across the face. Bakhura sputtered and gasped, the sudden shock of pain, normal pain, jarring his senses and blowing away the flames.

"Wake up!"

Another slap. Bakhura blinked rapidly, reeling with confusion, the scattered pieces bumping against each other as they settled. The hand was raised again, he could see it this time, coming towards him, and he caught it.

He stared down at his assailant and the name clicked into place. Pharaoh. Why the hell was Pharaoh _slapping_ him? "W-what are you d-doing?" Bakhura demanded, his breath shaky and shallow.

"You were babbling like a moron," Pharaoh replied, glaring up at him. "Everyone is looking for you, you know."

Bakhura stared at him, having a hard time processing what he'd said. "W-why?"

"Because the odds of you doing something stupid and reckless were weighed as pretty high," the Pharaoh said, pulling a phone out of his pocket and flipping it open. Bakhura stared at him blankly as the diminutive teenager put the phone to his ear. "I found him, Anzu... Block 53, west side. He's having some kind of psychotic break."

Pharaoh closed the phone and slid it back into his pocket, not taking his eyes off Bakhura. "Sit down," he ordered and Bakhura sank slowly to the ground, letting go of Pharaoh's wrist, which he'd been holding for some reason.

He leaned back against the brick wall behind him, staring at the Pharaoh, who sat down in front of him, arms crossed and watching him carefully. "W-what happened?" Bakhura whispered.

"You're _insane_ is what happened," Pharaoh answered.

Bakhura nodded slowly. That was true. But it didn't quite explain his current situation.

Pharaoh sighed, looking irritated. "You ran off in the middle of a scolding. Like a _child_. And you scared everyone and made us run all over the city for the better part of an hour."

Details fit themselves into place around the Pharaoh's explanation and Bakhura's hands squeezed into fists, knuckles scraping against the pavement. "... Ryou," he whispered. "I can't- I don't know- How do I... fix it...?"

"Oh shut up," Pharaoh scoffed.

"It was supposed to..." Bakhura mumbled, staring at the opposite wall. "It was funny..."

"It _was_ funny," Pharaoh said and Bakhura looked at him. A grin had taken over the sour expression of a few moments ago. "Do you know what you are now? There are three popular options in the rumor-mill today." He held up a hand and counted off on his fingers. "You're either a mob-boss, a professional assassin or an 'international jewel-thief'. The third one has picked up a lot of popularity since second period."

Bakhura blinked a few times, letting what the Pharaoh was saying sink in. Then the corner of his mouth hitched up a little and a weak, not entirely hysterical laugh came out of him. "Seriously, what did you do to Aida? I saw him today in the hall. The boy looks about ready to have a heart-attack," the Pharaoh leaned forward a bit, a slightly malicious twist to his grin. "And what is all this about a cat?"

"Cat?" Bakhura thought for a minute. "Wait, it was a dog, I think... I was playing psychotic sociopath or something and made up some shit about putting a dead dog on somebody's kitchen table back in Odate. I think I was pretty convincing."

"What, _you_ successfully coming off as a maniac? Never."

Bakhura laughed. "And y'know, I figured they'd just think I was saying a bunch of shit, right? So I looked up this Aida kid and found his house, and I left him a note while he was asleep, with all the personal information, y'know, parent's names and stuff, that I found on a web-search."

"That is _awful!_" Pharaoh exclaimed, laughing out loud. "Oh, no _wonder_ he looked like he was going to soil himself!" He laughed a moment longer and then reigned it in and added, "Not that I endorse breaking and entering."

"Oh, of course not," Bakhura snickered. "So- so wait, what did they say about this cat thing?"

Pharaoh started laughing again before pressing his lips together and taking a few settling breaths though his nose. "Okay, what I cobbled together is that you apparently put the frozen, headless family pet, with a knife stuck in it, into Aida's mother's bed."

They both started laughing again.


	13. Malik yells at Bakhura

The sound of an engine pulled itself away from the white-noise of the city and grew louder. A bike flew past the mouth of the alley and then breaks screeched, catching Bakhura's attention. Seconds later, Ryou came running around the corner. Bakhura started, feeling a jolt of dread mixed with quiet hope as Ryou ran right up and dropped down in front of him.

"I'm sor-" Bakhura started but cut off when Ryou threw himself against Bakhura and wrapped his arms tightly around him. "... R-Ryou?" he mumbled.

Ryou was shaking and gasping like he was completely winded. He just hung on to Bakhura, not saying anything, as his breath gradually slowed and became mixed with little hiccups. Bakhura dropped his head down against Ryou's shoulder and wrapped his arms tightly around Ryou's back, clinging and trembling.

Something that seemed like a long time passed; Bakhura heard Pharaoh push himself up and walk down the alley a few steps, then start conversing in low voices with Honda. Then Pharaoh's voice spoke a bit louder, addressing Anzu- on the phone? He might have been able to pick out the words if he'd cared to, but Bakhura's attention was focused solely on Ryou.

After a while, Ryou picked his head up a bit, sniffled and mumbled, "We need to call Malik. You freaked him out."

Bakhura nodded slowly. "My phone's broken..." he whispered.

"Yeah, we noticed," it was almost a laugh, the kind that came with relief rather than humor. He moved one of his arms from its place around Bakhura's neck to reach his coat pocket, although he was somewhat hindered by Bakhura's refusal to loosen his hold.

Ryou held the phone near Bakhura's shoulder, where he could see it without changing his position much, and punched in commands with his thumb. The ringing started and he held the phone up to Bakhura, saying "Here."

Bakhura reluctantly let go of Ryou with one arm so that he could hold the phone. The line picked up almost immediately and Malik's voice came on, a frantic shrillness to it. "Did you find him?"

"Mm..." Bakhura hesitated momentarily. "My phone broke."

There was a pause and then an exasperated sound. "I am going to _strangle_ you!" Malik growled.

"Yeah." Bakhura nodded and let out a long, shaky breath.

"What have we _learned?_" Malik demanded.

"... Enlighten me..."

A scoff. "Okay, let's see, you called me to cry, then you refused to listen to me -and let's remember that _you_ called _me_- and then you _broke_ the _God damned phone!_ That is _really annoying_, y'know?" Malik shouted and Bakhura had to hold the phone away from his ear a few inches. "And remember when _I_ said you were overreacting because you're fucked in the head, and _you_ said the world was ending? Who was right, huh? _Who_ was _right?_"

"You were..." Bakhura sighed.

"And you don't think you might take something away from this?"

"... I have poor judgment and, although your social-aptitude is severely lacking, you are less crazy than me," Bakhura said and Ryou buried a laughing snort against his shoulder.

"... I am going to let that one slide," Malik said in a much quieter voice. "And the _next_ time you go into armageddon-mode, I'm going to _remind_ you about this incident and _you_ are going to _listen_ to me. Tell Ryou I'm sending him a leash to put on you."

"You know..." Bakhura smiled slightly, leaning back. "Ryou road along on Honda's bike..."

Ryou's head shot up and he made a startled, annoyed sound. "It was the fastest way to get here!"

There was a moment of quiet on the other end of the line. "... That bitch."

"Stop deflecting!" Ryou grabbed for the phone and Bakhura twisted away.

"Oh yeah. It's not even a pretty bike. He totally bike-cheated with an ugly bike."

"Give me the phone!" Ryou demanded, grabbing at Bakhura's arm.

Malik had started laughing on the other end. "Slash its tires! That'll teach the tramp!"

"Give me the phone!" Ryou screamed.

"He wants to talk to yoooou! -Ow!" Bakhura said as Ryou's hand got caught in his hair trying to get the phone.

"_Give it!_"

"Well I don't know if I want to talk to him now," Malik declared in a voice that was hiding a laugh.

"Oh he's _mad!_" Bakhura said with a serious expression, looking back at Ryou.

"It was the _fastest_ way to _get_ here!" Ryou shouted defensively. "It was an _emergency!_"

Malik started laughing uncontrollably.

"Hey! Are you _done?_ Are you still demented or can we go _home?_"

Bakhura glanced up the alley at Pharaoh, who had his arms crossed and was looking bored and annoyed. "Y-yes! Sorry!" Ryou stuttered, flushing beautifully. "C-come on, I have homework and a lot of studying to do tonight," he said, pushing himself up off the ground and pulling on Bakhura's arm.

"Ohh, apparently I'm not being allowed to sleep in the street tonight, so I have to go," Bakhura said into the phone as he got up.

"Fine, call me later and tell me about this hussy-bike. I need an address, serial-number, mother's maiden name!" Malik said with the laugh still audible in his voice. "But seriously, call me, okay?"

"Roger," Bakhura said with a nod, letting Ryou tow him along out to the sidewalk. "Later."

"Bye."

Bakhura clicked the end call button and lowered the phone, tuning back in to where he was walking. Ryou was pulling him along the sidewalk behind Pharaoh and Honda, who was pushing his bike for the moment. Bakhura tilted his head. "You look ridiculous, you know," he commented. "Who walks a bike? Only people with broken bikes."

Honda glanced back at him. "I'm _trying _to lend emotional support or whatever to a friend. Plus I'm the only one here who outweighs you in case you decide to flip out again," Honda said, irritation clear in his tone.

"He's okay now, Honda-kun," Ryou said quietly.

"He seems stable, or as close to it as he gets to it," Pharaoh said with a nod. "That has to be heavy to push like that.

"It's not too bad, I just have to get the balance right and it glides along pretty well." Honda shrugged.

"The way back to our neighborhood is all up-hill from here," Pharaoh pointed out. "And _you_ live on the other side of the highway. You'd practically be making a loop."

"Trying to get rid of me, huh?" Honda smirked down at the Pharaoh.

Pharaoh chuckled. "If you like."

Honda gave the Pharaoh's shoulder a little push and said, "I'll catch you tomorrow." He glanced back over his shoulder. "Bakura, take it easy, okay?"

Ryou nodded and they watched Honda drive off. Bakhura mused about what it was that seemed so odd here, as he let Ryou lead him along a few steps behind Pharaoh. Being helped? By them? Yes, that felt strange. But they considered themselves Ryou's friends... and they did help Ryou when he reached out to them, so he supposed they were.

It was strange because 'helping' had always gone hand in hand with 'ganging up' in Bakhura's mind. It's what people did. They helped each other so that they could crush the people who were stronger than themselves individually. Lots of those confederations had tried to crush Bakhura. Helping was the way they struck at him.

"Thank you, Atemu-kun." Ryou's voice broke Bakhura out of his thoughts. He glanced up at the Pharaoh, who paused mid-stride.

"For what?" he asked, glancing back over his shoulder at Ryou.

"For finding him," Ryou said.

"Oh." Pharaoh seemed to consider that before he started walking again. "I'm good at finding things," he said. "It's like a maze."

"Hm, do you get a bit of cheese at the end then?" Bakhura asked with a slight jeer.

Pharaoh turned and started walking backwards to face them and grinned. "I got to slap you in the _face_. I'll take that over cheese any day."

Ryou cast a nervous look at Bakhura. Bakhura just laughed.

...

...

So that's the end of that cliff-hanger-ma-thingy. Going back to little 3-4 page vignettes again now. Hm, can't think of any important notes for this, and my brain isn't coming up with anything witty to say at the moment, so I'll just leave it at that and ask you to please comment/review.


	14. The fangirls rejoice

Bakhura sat on the sidewalk, leaned back against the pillar that supported the gate, absently flicking pebbles and holding his new phone to his ear. "It would probably cost more to ship it than to just sell it and get a new one... Are you really attached to _that_ bike?" he asked, finding a black, pea-sized pebble and flicking it in the direction of the street.

"Actually, I've been thinking about trying a different kind of build. Maybe a rice-rocket is the way to go," Malik replied in a slightly nasal voice; he sounded like he was laying on his back. "I guess this is a good opportunity to try it out."

"And maybe one that can take a passenger more comfortably?" Bakhura suggested, grinning softly and flicking a gray stone that was in the ambiguous range between pebble and sand particle.

"Oh so I'm going to be your chauffeur now?" Malik snorted. "Well in that case, I think _you_ should buy me a new bike. A _red_ one."

Bakhura made a sound between a hum and a laugh. "Are you trying to take advantage of my generosity? I don't know if I like you that much," he said, holding his finger up to see if he'd split the nail on the last flick. There was a little crescent-shaped chip hanging onto the tip by a hair-thin corner. He switched to flicking with the middle finger.

Malik laughed. "I'll win you over with my boyish charm."

"_Ryou_ has boyish charm," Bakhura corrected, grinning to himself. "_You_ have feminine wiles."

"Dick."

Bakhura snickered and then tilted his head back as he heard the chimes start up. "Ah, school's out," he noted.

"So now I suppose you're just going to leave me alone -so _very_ alone- and go play with Ryou," Malik accused, an amused note clinging to the words.

"I thought you were working at the museum today," Bakhura said.

"Yeah, I am," Malik admitted. "So I'm going to go work while you get to go play."

"The time-zones are not my fault," Bakhura reminded him with a chuckle. "And _you're_ the one who got all bitchy about the time-zones, _if you'll recall_."

"_I was three AM!_"

"It was almost lunch-time," Bakhura corrected.

"It was _three AM!_"

"Pansy," Bakhura snorted.

The clamor of students exiting the building grew louder and they started spilling past the gate. The ones coming out the near-side noticed Bakhura seated on the pavement as they came. Most skirted a rather wide perimeter around him, but after a few minutes, one of them broke the bubble of empty space with a loud exclamation.

"Diabound-san! Oh my goodness! I didn't think- I mean- that is to say- are you all right? Why are you down there?"

"Oh, the women are here," Bakhura noted for Malik's benefit, though he was pretty sure Romi had been loud enough for him to hear over the phone. He cast her a cheerful grin and climbed to his feet.

"Well I'd hate to keep you from your fan-club," Malik chuckled.

"We'll call you later," Bakhura promised.

"Oh don't worry about me!" Malik replied. "I'll be fine. Alone. And miserable... Bye."

"Bye," Bakhura said with a snort and ended the call, before turning his attention to Romi. "I'm fine," he answered giving her a friendly smile.

"Really?" Romi asked, looking unconvinced. "I- I'm so glad you came back- I mean- it's nice to see you again, Diabound-san!"

Several more voices called out to him and the peanut gallery started to coalesce rapidly, asking hesitant, indirect questions, some of them looking worried, some excited. They were about half a dozen strong when two of them gasped and they all stared past Bakhura's right shoulder.

He turned his head to look, just as Ryou's hand lighted against the back of his arm. "I need to go to the store today," he said, pausing next to Bakhura as the girls made plenty of space for him to move freely.

Bakhura smiled, feeling it all the way up to his eyes this time. "I can carry bags," he said.

"You can carry _one_," Ryou corrected sternly.

"Pffffff," Bakhura blew through his teeth, rolling his eyes. The doctor had told him not to lift more than ten kilos, and Ryou was not letting him forget it. "Fine."

"I want to go to the drug store first," Ryou said, starting to walk down the sidewalk and guiding Bakhura along with him.

Behind them, girls squealed and cheered.

...

...

Don't pick up the can of hot bacon grease and put it in the freezer. Wait until it is a can of cool bacon jelly and then put it in the freezer. You're less likely to burn yourself. Or spill grease all over the freezer.

This is the end of the daily updates, my back-log is now gone. I've got a bunny for the next one though, I'll work on it tonight and see how well it comes. The problem is I've got stuff planned out for a month (story-time) down the line, but haven't thought enough about the bridge between here and there.


	15. Mokuba is excited

Mokuba pressed his cheek against the tinted window, trying to look down the street ahead of the car. He wished he could sit in the front seat, but he had to sit where his body-guards could sit with him, which put him in the back of the limo where he could only look out sideways. He kicked his feet and squirmed, wanting to _be_ there already.

Finally the car slowed to a stop and he eagerly threw his seatbelt off. "Wait a moment, please, Mokuba-sama," Okui said, holding up a hand as he squinted out the dark windows. "There's an unsavory character loitering here."

Mokuba leaned over and looked out to the tall wrot iron gates supported between brick pillars. A man was leaning against one of the pillars looking at the limo curiously. It took Mokuba a moment to recognize him, he'd only seen the guy's real face once before. "That's Shadow-Bakura!" he said, grabbing the backpack next to his feet and pulling it on one shoulder. "He's the guy who wanted to kill Shadow-Yuugi," he explained for his guards' benefit.

The body-guards glanced at each other, exchanging nervous looks. "Mokuba-sama, do you think it is wise-"

"It's fine!" Mokuba dismissively, opening the door before the chauffeur had walked around to do it for him.

"M-Mokuba-sama!" Sone tried to grab the back of Mokuba's shirt but missed as Mokuba hopped out onto the sidewalk.

"Hi, shadow-guy!" Mokuba called with a wave, listening to his bodyguards scrambling out of the car and catching up to stand on either side of him.

"It's the mini-Kaiba!" Shadow-Bakura said with a grin. "What brings you to this humble place?"

"A Halloween tournament!" Mokuba answered ignoring his bodyguards' unhappy sounds and walking right up to him. "D'you want in?"

"My deck was _made_ for Halloween!" Shadow-Bakura grinned and squatted down, putting his head level with Mokuba's.

"Yeah, that's what _I_ thought!" Mokuba laughed. "Well, I mean, I wasn't really sure if it was _your_ deck or regular-Bakura's, actually," he admitted.

"We built it together, but Ryou doesn't really play much," Shadow-Bakura said with a shrug. "He likes games that are more story-intensive."

"That's cool, I guess," Mokuba said, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the pavement. "Do you think he'd want to play in the Halloween tournament?"

"I don't know," Shadow-Bakura said, tilting his head a little to the side. "You can ask him. I'm guessing your brother sent you to invite a Yuugi or two?"

"Yep!" Mokuba grinned. "Well, I decided to deliver the invitations personally, but they were already on Brother's invite-list."

"Well you have got... six minutes before class lets out," Shadow-Bakura noted, checking the clock on his cell-phone.

"Yeah, I left pretty early because I wanted to make sure I caught them all," Mokuba said, putting his arms behind his head and looking up at the huge analog clock on the front of the school. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"I like to walk Ryou home. I don't have much to do until the doctor says my ribs are good again." Shadow-Bakura shrugged.

"You come every day?" Mokuba asked. Was waiting outside a school really the least boring thing this guy could think of?

"Most days." He nodded. "I go for a walk and then end up here before school lets out."

"Wow, that sounds boring."

Shadow-Bakura laughed. "Sometimes. Malik's usually eating breakfast around now so I call and bug him sometimes."

Mokuba wrinkled his nose. "That guy's a douche-bag," he said, thinking of the Battle City fiasco. "_And_ he looks like a girl."

Shadow-Bakura laughed significantly louder than before and at the end of it he had to wipe away tears. "That- that is very true," Shadow-Bakura agreed, patting Mokuba on the head. "I wonder if he'll be sad about missing a tournament... but I think he should probably stay off your brother's radar for a while yet, huh?"

"We don't like _cheaters_," Mokuba agreed with a nod, crossing his arms.

"Well, it was very charitable of your brother not to have him arrested for fraud," Shadow-Bakura said with a smile, looking like he might laugh again. "I appreciate it."

"Well, the whole split-" Mokuba stopped and looked up as the tones that sounded more like a synthesizer than an actual bell sounded from speakers around the school.

"School's out," Shadow-Bakura observed. "Now, the fan-club usually gets down here faster than the cheerleaders and Ryou, but they're harmless, so don't be alarmed."

"The fan-club?" Mokuba asked, frowning. "The fan-club for what?"

"For anything they think is 'cute'," Shadow-Bakura answered, poking Mokuba's nose. "You might be at risk."

Mokuba was skeptical, and thought that Shadow-Bakura was probably joking, until three girls arrived, then two more, then another, and started talking in fast, high-pitched voices and giggling non-stop.

"Oh my gosh, Diabound-san, is that your mafia limo?" "_Juri!_" "But if it's not-" "What? _Really?_" "That cute little boy?" "What's your name, sweetie?" "Seriously?" "You know him personally, Diabound-san?" "Who are _those_ guys?" "Oh wow, _really?_" "What are you doing at our school?" "It's _obviously_ because of Yuugi-kun, dummy!" "Diabound-san, you play that game too, right?" "Of _course_ we'll come watch!"

They were _terrifying_. Mokuba stared at them, feeling like he was surrounded by lions, ready to pounce and eat him at any second. He was impressed at Shadow-Bakura's ability to calmly chat with them, sorting out what they were asking when there was always at least two of them talking at once, and not look the least bit nervous. Being taller than them probably helped, the way they loomed and formed a living cage around their prey was definitely freaking Mokuba out.

His bodyguards were looking pretty worried too, trying to keep the girls at a safe distance from Mokuba. He almost missed the sound of somebody shouting from the other side of the girl-wall because of the clamor they were making.

"Hey! D'ya mind? We got business!"

"Is that Jonouchi?" Mokuba asked, perking up and trying to see past the girl-wall.

"Let's find out!" Shadow-Bakura suggested and suddenly caught Mokuba under the arm-pits and hoisted him into the air.

Mokuba startled and then laughed in surprise as he was lifted up over the top of the girl-wall and could see his friends on the other side, looking back up at him. "Hi, guys!" he called, grinning and waving awkwardly. The girl-wall finally parted in the middle and the group was allowed past.

"Hey, Mokuba?" Shadow-Bakura called, still holding Mokuba up in the air. "Could you do me a favor?"

"What is it?" Mokuba asked, twisting his neck to look down at Shadow-Bakura's head.

"Could you ask your bodyguards to please not tase me when I put you down?"

Mokuba blinked and then looked at his bodyguards, who were standing in ready-to-fight postures on either side of Shadow-Bakura, their tasers out and ready. "Hey, Sone! Okui! Don't tase him! He's not hurting me!" Mokuba called down and the two bodyguards cast doubtful looks up at Mokuba, but reluctantly switched their tasers off and put them away. After that, Shadow-Bakura set him back down on the sidewalk, exchanging suspicious looks with the bodyguards.

"Hey, Mokuba! What's up?" Jonouchi asked, grinning at him.

"A Halloweeeeen tournament!" Mokuba giggled, pulling his backpack off his shoulder and digging inside for the invitations.

"Halloween? Does Kaiba ever spend more than a week planning his tournaments?" Honda asked shaking his head.

"We've been planning it for a while, Nii-sama just likes to wait until the last minute to announce them, then they get lots of publicity and nobody has the chance to get tired of them!" Mokuba explained, picking out two invitations and holding them out. "Nii-sama's inviting Yuugi _and_ Shadow-Yuugi!" he announced.

"You can call me Atemu now, Mokuba," Shadow-Yuugi said, looking a little nervous and glancing around as he took his invitation.

Mokuba turned back towards Shadow-Bakura, and now regular-Bakura was standing next to him, having some quiet conversation and then lightly tapping the back of Shadow-Bakura's head in a pretend slap. "Hey, Bakura, do you still play?" Mokuba asked as he handed an invitation to Shadow-Bakura.

Regular-Bakura gave him a surprised look and flushed a little, looking embarrassed. "Er, no, not really. It's not really my scene," he mumbled.

"Okay, I wasn't sure," Mokuba said with a nod.

"Hey Mokuba, where's my invitation?" Jonouchi asked, crouching down, eye-level with Mokuba, his arms rested on his knees.

"Nii-sama said not to give you one," Mokuba said, looking back at him blankly.

"Wha- That _bastard!_" Jonouchi shouted.

"Buuut- I printed one for you anyway!" Mokuba laughed, holding the last invitation out to Jonouchi.

Jonouchi blinked and then grinned. "Y'know, _you_ are the _only one_ bringing any respect to the Kaiba name," he said, roughly tousling Mokuba's hair before taking the invitation.

...

...

I considered continuing to drag this scene out, but I didn't have any particular inspiration and I decided that was a good breaking point. So... I do not know anything about this game and I am not going to write any matches because of that and because I usually find them pretty uninteresting and ridiculously melodramatic. But I'll write a vignette or two for during this tournament thing before moving on, probably.


	16. Jounochi gets upset

Two sevens.

Bakhura slammed his palm down on the pile of cards as Mai was just starting to reach out. She swore and laughed as Bakhura grinned and pushed the cards together before adding them to the bottom of his stack. "Getting' kinda slow there, ain'cha?" he jeered.

"Well I guess not many people have hands quicker than a thief," Mai shot back, smirking.

"Shame you couldn't stinky up the deck, huh?" Bakhura started the pile again with a three.

"Hard to do when I'm playing a gangster who always _insists_ on using _his_ deck," Mai retorted, throwing down a queen.

Two. Eight. Bakhura swore as Mai swept up the pile. "Are you accusing me of cheating?"

"Oh, I wouldn't give you that much _credit!_" Mai laughed, dropping a six.

"Them's fighin' words!" Bakhura declared.

"Ooh, bring it on, tough-guy!"

"Hey McGrumpy! Are you hitting on my girl?" Jonouchi demanded, drifting over to their table as his conversation with Yuugi apparently ended. They were on a balcony overlooking the stage with the tournaments other contestants who weren't currently playing a match.

"Joji, I think you're confused," Bakhura said, smirking and gesturing towards Mai. "This is not a 'girl.' This is a '_woman_.'" He moved his hands through the air, outlining imaginary curves, as he said the word.

Mai burst out laughing and Jonouchi flushed, now looking genuinely concerned. "Hey, _back_ off, man!" he snapped, slamming his hands down on the edge of the table. "Quit eyeing her!"

"What, you mean I'm not _supposed_ to look down her blouse?" Bakhura asked, lifting himself a few inches and peering at Mai's cleavage with great exaggeration. "Why is it so _low_ in the front then?"

Mai started laughing harder and Jonouchi turned fire-engine red and fumed. "I'm gonna kick your _ass!_"

"Well then," Mai said, still laughing, "you'd better slap-in!"

Jonouchi looked blank for a moment, apparently forgetting to be angry in his confusion. "What are you playing?"

"Ratscrew!" Bakhura answered and then slapped a pair of fours. "_Ha!_"

"Son of a bitch!" Mai exclaimed, more laughs falling from her lips. "Jonouchi, you're distracting me! He's gonna _win!_"

"I'll _win_ either way!" Bakhura countered, dropping a nine. "What's wrong, your little-girl hands can't keep up?"

"I thought I was a '_woman_'," Mai reminded him.

"Yeah, _I_ thought so _too!_" Bakhura snapped back and received another laugh.

"God damn it!" Jonouchi exclaimed, red and furious again, pulling at his hair. "Stop _flirting _with each other! What are you, starting a _harem_ or something?"

"I _should_ have a harem," Bakhura agreed, keeping his eyes on the pile.

"Hm, that job come with a benefits package?" Mai asked, making Jonouchi go inarticulate with rage.

"Diamonds!" Bakhura declared.

"Ooh, that's a girl's best friend!" Mai noted, teeth showing between her grinning lips as Jonouchi started sputtering.

Bakhura laughed. "I may not be a gentleman, but I _do_ prefer blondes," he shot back with a wink.

Jonouchi lost it and tackled Bakhura, which had the unfortunate effect of tipping over the table and spilling the current pile, along with Bakhura's hand, across the floor. "Nooo! I was _winning!_" Bakhura laughed and blocked Jonouchi's fist with his forearm before wrestling him into a headlock. Mai laughed hysterically through the whole thing.

"Hey! No fighting!" the voice of Commissioner Kaiba Mokuba shouted at them, though one of his bodyguards had the back of his shirt and wasn't letting the eleven-year-old run into the fray.

"Self-defense!" Bakhura protested, laughing and keeping a solid grip on Jonouchi's head as the teenager struggled and clawed at his arm.

"Jonouchi-kun, I think maybe you should just watch the match..." Yuugi suggested from the sidelines.

"You know, you're really not _helping_, Mai..." Atemu added with an eye-roll.

"Y-you can't _buy_ entertainment like this!" Mai declared, still laughing.

...

...

A/N: So part of the back-and-forth between Bakhura and Mai, "I may not be a gentleman, but I do prefer blondes" refers to the musical _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_, where Marilyn Munroe sang _Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend_. So, I'm breaking the culture wall here and throwing in an American pop-culture reference (well, pop culture of the 1950s, anyway) because it was funny at the time. For the purposes of the joke, I'll consider Ryou platinum-blond...

Oh, and they're playing 'Egyptian Ratscrew.' Hahaha, I'm so clever.

Hm, I don't know if I have anything else I want to write for the tournament... Not sure where I'll pick up with the next drabble...


End file.
